Xmmm's Log ...

[Xmmm]

Sniffer season 3 has really gone down the tubes.

1. Story lines are unimaginative and even cliched (ninja running around with a samurai dagger, really? Dark disturbing secrets about the Sniffer's dad? Really?)
2. Viktor: clumsy mediocre ladies' man not only becomes a creepy sexual harasser, but his success with women also goes way up, for no plausible reason.
3. Sniffer: becoming more and more of a crank, totally blind to his girlfriend's abnormal behavior.
4. Sniffer's girlfriend: how long is she going to stay in shock from the events of season 2?
5. Sniffer's ex-wife: went from chewing the scenery whenever she was on screen, to having some boring long-game master plan to destroy the Sniffer (or get him back, or both). She just sits around and chats now. She used to abuse prescription drugs, create public disturbances, humiliate the Sniffer at every opportunity -- all gone.
6. Sniffer's son: gone. Like he never existed. I guess that's good, but the kid was so annoying that he was almost fun to have around.
7. The minor characters (Viktor's boss, the computer whiz) get zero screen time now but were a big part of the appeal.
8. I thought it was weird that they went to Estonia for one episode and spent half of it developing the Estonian police team. It wasn't that interesting of a team. The main characters are working too hard?

[reineke]

Welcome back. Sniffer 1 was already pretty stinky.

[Xmmm]

About a year ago, reineke pointed out a resource at spreaker.com. A guy named Lorenzo Pieri has created a lot of free, downloadable audiobooks in Italian and put them there for download. This has ended up being a gold mine for me. Not only are they free and top quality recordings, but the books are considerably more modern and interesting than librivox stuff.

Rating the Italian authors I've read or listened to from easiest to most difficult:

1. Buzzati (no difficulty!)
2. Levi (only difficulty is use of a lot of French and German)
3. Sciascia (only difficulty is use of a lot of Sicilian)
4. Moravia (challenging)
5. Calvino (barely finished -- a lot of everyday words that a learner is still not likely to know, for example 'saw' as in the tool, or 'wasp'. I had to look up many words)
6. Pirandello (gave up after couple chapters, too difficult)
7. Bassani (ditto)
8. Bufalino (gave up on page one)

I read Il conformista by Moravia and liked it a lot. Moravia has the advantage of being prolific as well as interesting, so I'm starting on La romana.

I retook a couple of vocab tests for Italian. After about 4 months of nothing but reading and watching TV,

"arealme" 14000->18000
"ghent" top 5000 words 77%->82%

[reineke]

Kamlari shared that resource and I added it to the Italian resources thread. There you will find links to other audiobook sites.

PS Changing languages in Netflix may cause some language options to disappear. For example, changing to Mandarin or Polish may "erase" other languages as options from the menu. If you tinker around, your languages will reappear.

"Netflix transmits only a limited number of languages to each customer for a given movie, even though more options may be available. I suspect this is a bandwidth issue. The languages listed above the subtitles/audio icon depend on account settings and customer location. This means that you might not see German listed as an option even though German subtitles & audio are actually available. The solution is simple: Just go to your account settings, choose Language, pick your target language, and hit the Save button. If you do this for Deutsch, all German options will then appear whenever available. Do be aware that if you switch to German, almost everything on your account will appear in German. If you watch stuff in German for a while, some lurking Netflix subroutine will identify you as a German speaker, so you will still see German options displayed even if you switch back to another language."

https://www.duolingo.com/comment/256715 ... -subtitles

[Xmmm]

I've found a non-fiction book to read in Russian that is considerably easier to read than high-brow fiction. For one thing, it's swarming with cognates, which are often in short supply in Russian fiction. The book also has the advantage of being really long:

Империя должна умереть: История русских революций в лицах. 1900-1917

I'm almost 100 pages into it with miles to go.


I also watched a documentary on the tragedy of Ekaterina Savinova, a really successful Russian actress who contracted brucellosis from drinking raw milk and ended up with an incurable (in the 50s and 60s anyway) recurrent brain fever that derailed her career.

[Xmmm]

I saw A ciascuno il suo (the film) on youtube after reading it and listening to the audiobook. I thought it was pretty good. The screenplay takes a few liberties but all in all it's faithful to the book. It also captures the subtle and darkly comic side of what is a fairly grim story.

On the other hand I'm watching Il giorno della civetta right now and it seems to be a real bastardization of the novel. So this one is a thumbs down.

[Xmmm]

Work has been really busy the last couple months ... and even worse the last couple of weeks. It's affecting everything for me, not just language study.

Russian

Империя должна умереть has the singular advantage of being readable. I would not call it fascinating, but I can read it without a dictionary and understand fairly well what's going on. As I said before, it's non-fiction written in a journalistic style with a lot of cognates. The problem I'm facing is that after 10-14 hours of work, I don't want to come home and stare at a wall of Cyrillic. I'm trying to make some incremental progress on the book while waiting for life to settle down.

Italian

Italki is going well. I do try to push myself a little each time. I try to use the past tense, I try to use the future tense, I try to use coulda should woulda constructions. I would put my speaking at B1, reading and listening at B2. I've listened to B2 samples on youtube and don't find them overly difficult.

I have some Italian audiobooks. I have some books to read. I wish there was more high quality Italian TV. The Italian Nero Wolfe is not awful. Il commissario De Luca is not awful either. But I don't get excited about watching them.

Edit: 72 Dangerous Animals:Latin America is available with Italian dubbing on Netflix

Turkish

I'm pretty hooked on Turkish TV. If it's not 46 Yok Olan, it's Behzat Ç. Last night it was all about the sorrows of Harun, that poor sap. I've definitely learned "Kalk! Kalk, kalk!" for when you hit someone and want them to get back up again.

I heard Ezel is good too but haven't had time to check. Then there's always Vatanim Sensin, which is great and I only saw about 6 out of 58 episodes. The problem is that I don't actually want to study Turkish. I have a Turkish reader, but don't read it. I have a grammar book, but don't read it either. I gave up on TurkishClass101 because I really disliked the materials. I've signed up instead with TurkishTeaTime, will try to go through the podcasts there. Although the real temptation is always to just zone out and watch 3 hours of Turkish TV and do zero studying.

[Xmmm]

Вот это да.
MTV Soundcheck: Аигел

[Xmmm]

Russian:

Intensive Listening: Татарин, Ария судьи

Extensive Listening: Total Drama (dubbed)

Italian

I have the opportunity to go to a Laura Pausini concert in a few weeks. Given where I live, I fear all the songs will Spanish or English but we'll see.

Extensive listening: Grenseland (dubbed), 72 Dangerous Animals: Latin America (dubbed), Heavy Rescue: 401 (dubbed)

Turkish

Hanging tough with Turkish Tea Time. I'm more than half done with the newbie lessons, which are mostly a review.

[Xmmm]

Italian

I re-read all of A ciascuno il suo within the last 24 hours. The second reading was much easier than than the first. I've picked up Todo modo, also by Sciascia.

I listened to two thirds of Le tigri di mompracem, but think I'll give up on it. I tried but it's pretty dated.

I'm thinking to go back and re-watch season 1 of Iron Fist in Italian.

Russian

Still struggling with Империя должен умереть. It has the singular advantage that I'm able to read it without looking up words, but is not the most interesting thing I've ever read, at least so far.

My listening these days is Total Drama Island, dubbed in Russian. I've learned the Russian words for dude, jellyfish, and carabiner.

Turkish

Today I'll be finishing the Noobie podcasts of Turkish Tea Time. Tomorrow I plan to read through all 37 transcripts, which adds up to maybe 9 pages of written material.

And I'm trying to figure out how to be more responsible with watching Behzat Ç. Yesterday I watched episode #23 with English subtitles, tomorrow I'll watch it with no subtitles, then maybe next week again with Turkish subtitles and again with no subtitles. Watching each episode several times may be more useful. The problem is, the show is very modern with a lot of bleeped out curse words. The main character also says "lan" all the time which apparently can mean something like dude, but can also be an insult and is basically the kind of word a foreign learner should avoid using.