Xmmm's Log ...

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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby Xmmm » Sat Jul 28, 2018 4:08 am

Italian

1. Listened to La provinciale by Alberto Moravia. I thought it was banal.
2. Read Todo modo by Leonardo Sciascia. It was ... weird. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. Definitely not my favorite by him.
3. Reading La romana by Alberto Moravia. This book is very readable, but the subject matter is not to my taste. I will probably stick with it just because it is written in first person and in a simple style so I can rack up pages for the super challenge, but I probably would not recommend it to others.
4. Listening to Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. Four chapters into it and it's terrific so far. This one I do recommend.
5. Have rewatched almost all of Iron Fist season 1.

Overall, a very productive week in Italian. However, my tutor thinks I should switch over to listening to radio news. More vocabulary, more up-to-date, more variety etc. And I'd get up to speed on Italian current events. I'm a little reluctant to follow this advice (after all, I made so much progress doing what I was doing before), but ... hey, I will give it a go.

I've done 20 hours of Italki sessions now, after doing about 500 hours of listening beforehand. I think my speaking was A1/A2 in the first session, moved up to a B1 by the 3rd session, and has spent the last 17 sessions crawling upwards to the point where I'm B1/B2. So doing a lot of listening in a silent period definitely saves some effort on the production side. And on the other hand, the production side requires more practice than I thought. Just because I can read and listen at a B2/C1 level doesn't mean I don't make the dumbest mistakes when I speak ... at least I hear that it's a mistake as I'm saying it ...


Russian

Империя должен умереть. If I were going to write a blurb for this book, it would be "You know what the ten most important people were doing during the Russian Revolution. Did you ever wonder what 1000 less well known characters were doing?" Witte, Gapon, Pleve, Azef, etc.

Watched Поколение П. on youtube. It doesn't do the book justice -- but then, the book is unfilmable.

My perennial struggle to find something to listen to continues. TV shows are okay, but I'm getting burned out on TV. Audio books are too difficult unless I soften them up by reading in English first. I can't stand the "learner" podcasts. Even if they are more at my level, the sing-song condescending quality drives me up the wall. Hmmm. It's a dilemma. I'm going to try some news podcasts from http://www.radiovesti.ru.

Turkish

I'll be re-reading "First Turkish Reader for Beginners" and re-listening to Turkish Tea Time podcasts for the indefinite future.
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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby Xmmm » Sat Aug 04, 2018 4:54 am

Italian

I finished listening to the audiobook for Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and thought it was great. I just received the paperback version and will read that next. Then I'll probably listen to it again. That works a lot better for me than simultaneous listening-reading.

About 70% done with La romana and looking forward to finishing it so I never have to read it again.

And I've ordered a hard copy of Un anno sull'altipiano, which I can also get in audiobook form at ilnarratore.com.

Russian

Good news here. "How to Get Away with Murder" is available on Netflix with Russian dubbing. It looks like it might be a step up from "Total Drama Island."

Update with Sad News: After watching exactly one episode of "How to Get Away with Murder" with Russian dubbing yesterday, I tuned in today ... and the Russian dubbing is gone. I don't know if someone turned it on by accident, or rolled it out prematurely, or what, but back to Total Drama Island I guess. :(


I've also come to the conclusion that I have to get off the input-only plan I've been coasting on the for the last couple years because even though my Russian has been improving, the improvement is awfully gradual. I'm going to do a couple months of Modern Russian and Glossika, and then shop for a tutor in October. I guess talking to a tutor once a week is my form of "self-testing."


Turkish

I'm thinking to maybe take a break from random dialogues at Turkish Tea Time and go do FSI Turkish. They didn't record the drills so the time commitment is not huge. I'd probably benefit from the structure.
Last edited by Xmmm on Sun Aug 05, 2018 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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StringerBell
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby StringerBell » Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:03 pm

Xmmm, I've really enjoyed reading through your log. I think we are doing some similar things, and reading about someone else doing what I've done/am doing has been both entertaining and vindicating in some sense.

I've also done extensive listening and video watching in this past year and in the last months have slowly started to do more speaking. At first it was really frustrating having something like a B1/B2 listening comprehension but then struggling to say the most basic of things. Or being able to use some fairly complex specialized vocab but then not know how to say something like "it's your turn".

I agree with something you said way back when about how with a A2 listening comprehension, you really can't hold conversations because you just don't understand what people are saying to you. I've found that being about to understand a normal-paced speaker (if even I'm not a normal-paced speaker, myself) has meant that I can hold conversations with anyone about anything even if I can't myself say something as complex and well-crafted as I would like.

I've almost completed 8 full seasons of "That 70s Show" in Italian on Netflix. I didn't see you list that in any of your lists. I chose it specifically because there is a lot of common colloquial expressions and generally useful banter between teenagers and adults (as opposed to mafioso or politicians). This kind of dialogue has been very helpful when it comes to speaking. When a character said something particularly useful, I'd make a note of it and then try to say it myself a few times.

I'm also learning Polish, which may not be as challenging as Russian due to the fact it doesn't have a totally different alphabet, but I'd say it's still been much slower-going than Italian. At this point I've put in over 650 hours with Polish, and it feels like it's equivalent to something like 100 hours of Italian. When I feel a little frustrated by that, I just remind myself that there's a reason Italian is FSI Category 1 while Slavic languages are Category 4. They do legitimately take more time because they are much more distant from English. So instead of comparing the two languages, I try to focus on the fact that I am continuing to make slow progress with a legitimately tough Cat 4 language that most English speakers wouldn't have even attempted!

One issue I've been having with reading in Italian is the heavy use of passato remoto. I'm married to a northern Italian, and in the north they almost never use passato remoto when they speak, so it's the one verb tense I decided to completely ignore. This has made reading any kind of fiction a total hell and really useless for me, but then I realized that non-fiction doesn't have this issue, so I've been reading that. I found a really awesome website called EfficaceMente - the guy who runs it also has a twitter feed and youtube channel. He has a ton of interesting "personal growth" articles. It's written in an informal way with a lot of juicy colloquial expressions.

I've been reading those articles (and also reading them out loud to perfect my pronunciation). I also read through all the comments people leave in addition to the article or video. He had one article with a bunch of book suggestions, and many were non-fiction. I couldn't access them through amazon.com but when I contacted Amazon they said if I changed my location to Italy and went through amazon.it then I'd be able to buy them. I haven't done this yet, though. Have you had any issues at all with the heavy use of passato remoto? (which autocorrect keeps trying to change into "pasta remote" :shock: ).
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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby Xmmm » Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:38 am

StringerBell wrote:I've almost completed 8 full seasons of "That 70s Show" in Italian on Netflix. I didn't see you list that in any of your lists. I chose it specifically because there is a lot of common colloquial expressions and generally useful banter between teenagers and adults (as opposed to mafioso or politicians). This kind of dialogue has been very helpful when it comes to speaking. When a character said something particularly useful, I'd make a note of it and then try to say it myself a few times.


My breakthrough show for Italian was House of Cards. That's where I went from less than 10% comprehension to maybe 40% in just 5 seasons. I wish there were more shows with 5 to 8 seasons available. I know I don't want to watch Don Matteo.

StringerBell wrote:I'm also learning Polish, which may not be as challenging as Russian due to the fact it doesn't have a totally different alphabet, but I'd say it's still been much slower-going than Italian. At this point I've put in over 650 hours with Polish, and it feels like it's equivalent to something like 100 hours of Italian.


The Russian alphabet is the easiest thing about Russian and takes maybe a week to get comfortable with. My understanding is that the difficulty for Russian and Polish is the same. And 650 vs 100 sounds familiar. I'm at 1500 hours in Russian and 800 in Italian, and my Italian is now considerably better.

StringerBell wrote:when I contacted Amazon they said if I changed my location to Italy and went through amazon.it then I'd be able to buy them. I haven't done this yet, though.


It has to be a real address, though, right? Are you talking about something like putting a hotel address, and just downloading digital stuff? Or having two accounts? I'm interested ... there's more selection at amazon.it.

StringerBell wrote:Have you had any issues at all with the heavy use of passato remoto? (which autocorrect keeps trying to change into "pasta remote" :shock: ).


What's the passato remoto? :)

There's a joke where the husband says "I'm not eating this broccoli." And the wife says "that's not broccoli, that's cauliflower." And the husband says "I say it's broccoli, and I say the hell with it."

I read some fiction books in Italian. They were hard, didn't understand much. Re-read, read some non-fiction, re-read, read, re-read. Now I can read any kind of mainstream stuff where the writer doesn't have a weird, defective style.

Like, for learners of English, anyone could read Hemingway or Graham Greene or George Orwell. But you wouldn't steer learners to Faulkner (convoluted sentences) or Mark Twain (let's write in dialect -- phonetically -- so it doesn't look like English!).

So Dino Buzzati and Leonardo Sciascia and Carlo Levi and Alberto Moravia -- they're all very readable guys. But Calvino and Bufalino, not so much -- at least when I tried a while back. And Pirandello is somewhere in the middle.

I'm very happy with this massive-exposure-and-the-hell-with-grammar-at-least-until-I-reach-C1 approach and owe it all to reineke (although I'm sure he'd disavow any knowledge or approval of my activities), and to various references on this board to Kato Lomb and Antonio Graceffo.

Edit:

And of course, reineke found the best video Steve Kaufman ever made:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =19&t=6386

And here's the second best video Steve Kaufman ever made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYss9Xd7EBc
Last edited by Xmmm on Sun Aug 05, 2018 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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StringerBell
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby StringerBell » Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:59 am

So I spent an hour on the phone with an Amazon rep to figure this whole thing out, but eventually they told me that if I had some friend or family member living in Italy, I could just use their address as mine. I needed to add a phone number, but I didn't know my in-laws Italian number off-hand. Since it was for the purpose of downloading digital content, I'm not actually sure that the physical address and phone number needs to belong to you or someone you know. I actually used google maps to pick an address in a town in Italy rather than using my in-laws' address. The rep insinuated that the address/number didn't really have to be someone connected to me, but they didn't actually come out and say it, that's just my interpretation. It's fairly straightforward to change your location in the account settings, that should be all that's required (and then you should be able to change it back after you download the ebook you bought).

edit: forgot to mention that I've seen that first Steve Kaufman video, it was really good, though the one with him speaking Chinese was new to me and was very inspiring!
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garyb
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby garyb » Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:30 am

StringerBell wrote:One issue I've been having with reading in Italian is the heavy use of passato remoto. I'm married to a northern Italian, and in the north they almost never use passato remoto when they speak, so it's the one verb tense I decided to completely ignore.
...
I haven't done this yet, though. Have you had any issues at all with the heavy use of passato remoto? (which autocorrect keeps trying to change into "pasta remote" :shock: ).


Sorry if I'm butting in here, but... In my experience, you can totally get away without using the passato remoto in speech, as long as you can understand it. As with everything, learning to understand it is far easier than learning to produce it. I've never properly studied it; I just picked it up from reading. After a couple of novels I was recognising and understanding it most of the time, and the Kindle dictionary was helpful for some of the less obvious irregular forms.

Most of my Italian friends use it fairly frequently to talk about things that happened in the non-recent past, although the "threshold" can vary from a few months to a few years ago. I try to follow their example but sometimes get stuck and just revert to the passato prossimo. I should really study it more for the sake of completeness, but since it's not an obstacle to getting my point across it's such a low priority that I never get around to it.
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StringerBell
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby StringerBell » Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:13 pm

garyb wrote:Sorry if I'm butting in here, but... In my experience, you can totally get away without using the passato remoto in speech, as long as you can understand it. As with everything, learning to understand it is far easier than learning to produce it. I've never properly studied it; I just picked it up from reading. After a couple of novels I was recognising and understanding it most of the time, and the Kindle dictionary was helpful for some of the less obvious irregular forms.

Most of my Italian friends use it fairly frequently to talk about things that happened in the non-recent past, although the "threshold" can vary from a few months to a few years ago. I try to follow their example but sometimes get stuck and just revert to the passato prossimo. I should really study it more for the sake of completeness, but since it's not an obstacle to getting my point across it's such a low priority that I never get around to it.


Xmmm, please forgive the minor thread hijack here, hopefully it's not to much of a transgression!

I've had a similar experience with passato remoto; I never studied it and only learned about it when I came across in the novels I read. I can more or less recognize that a verb is in the passato remoto form when I come across it in written form, but I'm not at a place where I'd ever be able to use it myself. I have enough on my plate just trying to decide between using "ho fatto" vs. "stavo facendo" vs. "facevo" forms (I don't even remember what those forms are called) that throwing the passato remoto into the mix is too much at the moment. I agree, it doesn't seem to be "necessary" at least at my current level.

Xmmm, do you find yourself having trouble choosing between different past tense forms? Do you use passato remoto when you speak or do you recognize it but not use it yourself? (Maybe that's an impossible to answer question since you asked me before what passato remoto was! :D )
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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby Xmmm » Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:04 am

StringerBell wrote:
garyb wrote:Sorry if I'm butting in here, but... In my experience, you can totally get away without using the passato remoto in speech, as long as you can understand it. As with everything, learning to understand it is far easier than learning to produce it. I've never properly studied it; I just picked it up from reading. After a couple of novels I was recognising and understanding it most of the time, and the Kindle dictionary was helpful for some of the less obvious irregular forms.

Most of my Italian friends use it fairly frequently to talk about things that happened in the non-recent past, although the "threshold" can vary from a few months to a few years ago. I try to follow their example but sometimes get stuck and just revert to the passato prossimo. I should really study it more for the sake of completeness, but since it's not an obstacle to getting my point across it's such a low priority that I never get around to it.


Xmmm, please forgive the minor thread hijack here, hopefully it's not to much of a transgression!

I've had a similar experience with passato remoto; I never studied it and only learned about it when I came across in the novels I read. I can more or less recognize that a verb is in the passato remoto form when I come across it in written form, but I'm not at a place where I'd ever be able to use it myself. I have enough on my plate just trying to decide between using "ho fatto" vs. "stavo facendo" vs. "facevo" forms (I don't even remember what those forms are called) that throwing the passato remoto into the mix is too much at the moment. I agree, it doesn't seem to be "necessary" at least at my current level.

Xmmm, do you find yourself having trouble choosing between different past tense forms? Do you use passato remoto when you speak or do you recognize it but not use it yourself? (Maybe that's an impossible to answer question since you asked me before what passato remoto was! :D )



I spent such a ridiculously long amount of time trying to answer these strange questions that I didn't get any studying done this evening.

Then when I finally had something that halfway expressed what I wanted to express, I clicked submit -- only to find out I was logged out and the response was lost.
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StringerBell
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby StringerBell » Wed Aug 08, 2018 1:43 pm

Xmmm, that happened to me once before, it's AWFUL!!!

Please go back to your languages and when you feel like you've got some time, maybe you can maybe try another response here, I don't want to distract you from what you should be focusing on, so no rush to write back, even if it takes a few months (or maybe you'd prefer that I didn't ask you questions anymore, your call)
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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Chaos and Failure Log

Postby Xmmm » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:30 pm

1. I don't have trouble choosing between various past tense forms because when I speak I'm trying to channel the spirits of garbage TV. I say whatever they tell me to.
2. I do not hear passato remoto in dubbed TV -- ever. I may have heard it in Il segreto dell'acqua (looks like I'll be watching that for the 6th time), but that show really played up its regionalism (Palermo). As I understand it, passato remoto in speech is a regional thing. It's used in parts of southern Italian, and rarely used in speech elsewhere. And even if it occasionally is, the more 'natural' mistake would be to use one of the other forms, rather than throwing in a weird, bookish form in the wrong place.
3. In my reading I of course encounter the passato remoto all the time. I didn't know what it was called, and simply thought of it as "the past tense Italian writers like to use in books." It certainly threw me for a loop and added to my reading difficulties early on -- but you know the point of massive exposure is that you just get used to things being the way they are.
4. I've been told that if you want to take a language to a high level, you have to study the grammar at some point. I've also been told that it's perfect okay for "some point" to be at the end, when you're already high intermediate. I thinking studying right now about the passato remoto and trying to randomly throw it into conversation would mess up my speech. Because right now I speak sort of naturally, with pretty good accent, and my speech is peppered with all kinds of cliches, mild curse words, and commonplace utterances. If I start consciously thinking about what I say, and start experimenting with weird forms that I don't hear in common speech, I worry I'll end up sounding bookish and weird, like someone who is learning Italian out of a grammar book. :)

Right now I would self assess as maybe B1 in speaking, B2 in listening and at least B2 in reading. So I'm about halfway to my goal of B2 in speaking, and C1 in receptive skills. So I'll buckle down with a grammar book, maybe in the summer of 2019.
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