An opera fan's log - French, German, Italian, etc

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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French, Spanish, and German

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Jul 25, 2018 8:04 pm

When I tested out of the first two checkpoints in Duolingo German, it gave me 10 XP for each lesson I skipped. And it was a slow day at work on top of that, so… this is definitely a one-day XP record for me.
Duolingo German XP.png
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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French, Spanish, and German

Postby Deinonysus » Sat Jul 28, 2018 3:10 am

I finally finished Le petit prince! What a great book, just the right combination of uplifting and soul crushing. It's the first in what I'm hoping will be a long list of books I really ought to have read. I think alternating between English and French books is working well. I've started in on 1984 and then it's back to Les aventures de Tintin.

I think I've dusted the cobwebs off of my German enough that I should be fine keeping up with an intermediate class if I'm able to take it, so I'm moving my Duolingo time mostly back to Spanish. I haven't really started to plateau yet in Spanish and I think it's worth spending more time on it. A lot of things are familiar either from French or from when I took Spanish in high school, so I'm still making very quick progress.
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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French and Spanish

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:18 pm

I'm really enjoying reading more anglophone fiction. I think it will help my enjoyment of books in other languages too. I'm excited to read a lot of major authors in the Western Canon in the original (like Verne, Hugo, Dumas, Molière, Hesse, Grass, Goethe, Cervantes, Garcia Marquez, and some day I'll learn Russian too for Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Pushkin, etc), but there is so much great anglophone literature that I haven't read, and I can read them right now since I was lucky enough to get English for free! I'm still enjoying 1984 at the moment. I think Frankenstein is next, and I never did get past the first couple chapters of Great Expectations in high school when I was assigned it.

I also have a list of books that I really ought to read for better fundamental understanding of literature in general. In Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he has chapters dedicated to Shakespeare, the Bible, fairy tales, and mythology as important sources for references and parallels in Western literature.
  • Shakespeare - I have my gaps but I'm pretty familiar, so nothing in the queue right now.
  • The Bible - I have a very good annotated English translation of the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) that I got for my Bar Mitzvah. I tried reading through it once but never got past Leviticus. I'll also need to read the New Testament; I'm leaning towards getting a KJV because I like the Early Modern English.
  • Fairy Tales - I have some nice copies of Perrault's Contes and the Grimms' Märchen, which I have a high enough level to at least stumble through in the original. I also impulse bought a copy of Hans Christian Andersen's Eventyr in Danish, but that will need to wait until I get some uninterrupted time to study Danish up to a decent level.
  • Mythology - I would absolutely love to learn Latin, Ancient Greek, and Old Norse some day, but for now I'll stick with Bulfinch's Mythology. It was written as a reference for people to understand classical references in poetry (mainly focusing on poems by Byron, Milton, and Tennyson, but with quotes from plenty of other poets as well, mostly 19th Century English), so as a prerequisite I've also assigned myself Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled to understand poetry a bit better.

I really do feel obligated to get up to the conversational level in Modern Hebrew soon, while my parents are still around for me to speak it with. I'm making very good progress in Spanish and I don't want to disrupt my momentum, but maybe some time next year I'll spend some time on Hebrew.
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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French and Spanish

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:50 pm

I'm slowing down a bit with language courses.
Last night I skipped Assimil and Destinos,
And just read Orwell and The Ode Less Travelled,
And played some Masters of Orion 2.
However, I did pick up the next set
Of Pimsleur Spanish from the library.
It's part 1B, lessons 15 through 30.
So now I'm back to learning in the car.

Once I have finished 1984,
Rather than jumping into Frankenstein,
I think that first I should read through Bullfinch's
Mythology, at least the part on Greek
Mythology. I think that it would help me
To get more out Shelley's Frankenstein.
First, the subtitle of the book is "The
Modern Prometheus", a clear allusion
To Greek Mythology. Second, Bulfinch
Quoted her husband Percy many times,
And their friend Byron still more heavily,
So I'm expecting lots of classical
Allusions in the work of Mary Shelley.
But first, before I even start Bulfinch,
I want to get through Stephen Fry's The Ode
Less Travelled
. I just finished Chapter I.
As you could guess, the subject is Iambic
Pentameter. And he gave an assignment
To carry a notebook, and to jot down
Whatever lines of verse come into mind.
He makes the reader swear, before they move
To the next chapter, to write twenty lines
Of Iambic Pentameter. And then,
Practice writing as much as possible.

And that is why this entry is so weird.
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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French and Hebrew

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:14 pm

I withdrew from the Super Challenge in French. Honestly, it was just stressful to track my time on Twitter, and the motivation factor wasn't strong enough to make up for it. I'm going to watch or read what I'm interested in, regardless of the number of hours that I log. Tintin and Verne are still on the docket, although I'm focusing on reading more Anglophone lit in English at the moment. I finished 1984 and I'm currently rereading Jurassic Park.

I have a kid coming along, so I want to focus on the languages that I want h(er|im) to be most proficient in. The two languages that stick out are French and Hebrew. My wife is fluent in French and I'm proficient, and we travel to French Canada all the time, so that is an obvious target. And I want my parents to primarily speak to h(er|im) in Hebrew, so I want to get proficient in that as well before s?he comes along.

German is another factor, and I definitely want to read my kid German classics like Der Regenbogenfisch, Grimms Märchen, and the Bär und Tiger books (and hopefully Michael Ende when I'm more advanced). If I'm able to audit a German course I'll focus on that and Hebrew and maybe just try to maintain my French. Otherwise, I'll try to take a French course and leave German alone.

For the moment, I'm dropping Spanish for now in favor of Hebrew. I ordered Pimsleur Hebrew from the library, I'm going back to my Hebrew textbooks, and I'm relearning to type in Hebrew in preparation for Duolingo. I'll be returning Pimsleur Spanish to the library. I'll need to finish Destinos (and find out whether Don Fernando will reunite with Rosario) another time. It would just be too many languages for me, especially since I'll be trying to get past the beginner level in Hebrew.
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French and Hebrew

Postby MamaPata » Thu Aug 16, 2018 5:50 am

Congratulations!
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MattNeilsen
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French and Hebrew

Postby MattNeilsen » Fri Aug 24, 2018 11:46 pm

Thanks for stopping by my log - I'm excited to see a fellow Hebrew traveler! Granted, it sounds like you're quite a bit ahead of me with the conversational background, but this only fuels my inner competitive drive to train harder :)

On an unrelated note, I'm super intrigued by your description of Danish. Supposedly, I have a lot of Danish blood in me and it's always been in the back of my mind to learn the language. I'm focusing on Hebrew first, but I might have to scratch that Danish itch in the future...
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Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - working on French and Hebrew

Postby Deinonysus » Sat Aug 25, 2018 12:23 am

MattNeilsen wrote:Thanks for stopping by my log - I'm excited to see a fellow Hebrew traveler! Granted, it sounds like you're quite a bit ahead of me with the conversational background, but this only fuels my inner competitive drive to train harder :)

On an unrelated note, I'm super intrigued by your description of Danish. Supposedly, I have a lot of Danish blood in me and it's always been in the back of my mind to learn the language. I'm focusing on Hebrew first, but I might have to scratch that Danish itch in the future...

Haha, I can assure you that my Hebrew is quite limited. I'm basically limited to asking for water or complimenting someone's dog. I got sidetracked by Indonesian so I probably won't be back to Hebrew for a few months.

Danish is a very fun language, and the grammar is extremely simple! The pronunciation is tricky though but I don't think it's quite as bad as everyone says it is.
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Deinonysus
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Re: An opera fan's log - Deutsch bis zum Maximum! Also working on French.

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Nov 20, 2018 7:36 pm

I'm switching back to this log after working on Indonesian for the last three months. It quickly become one of my favorite languages and I want to spend much more time on it in the future, but right now I want to focus on more immediate goals, so I'm dropping it for the time being. I think I've gotten up to a comfortable mid/high beginner level and I think I'll be able to mostly pick up where I left off when I get the chance to study it again.

DEUTSCH BIS ZUM MAXIMUM
I've been auditing an intermediate-level German class at a university this semester. It's helping me tremendously to fill in the gaps that come with being self-taught, but I'm finding it to be below my current level, and the last couple of super-official 15-minute internet tests have placed my German at an advanced or B2 level, I've tentatively changed my level of German from Intermediate to Advanced in my profile, although I'm doubtful that I would pass a B2 exam right now without lots of study, and in particular, my vocabulary needs a lot of improvement.

I've set myself a goal of getting a Goethe-Zertifikat C1 some time next year. This may not be a reasonable or achievable goal, but there's only one way to find out. Even though I don't currently work with German, a "Professional Working Proficiency" would look pretty shiny on my résumé.

I don't know exactly what it will take to get there, but I know I need to do whatever I can, including:
  • Duolingo
  • Clozemaster
  • Watching DW stories every day
  • Listening to German music in the car
  • Writing most posts in this log in German and then translating into English
I thought I was too advanced for Duolingo to still help, but much to my surprise, I was using it a bit recently and it was catching a lot of basic errors, so I think I would still get a lot out of finishing and gilding the German tree.

I have a hard time with German genders (das Genus/die Genera, or simply grammatische Geschlecht), so I'm working on a small Anki deck to memorize this list of general rules:
https://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/Gr ... ender.html

Französisch bis zum Durchschnitt
I also want to keep going with French. This includes:
  • Finishing Advanced Assimil (Using French)
  • Using more French with my wife
  • Watching France24 regularly

Und etwas Hebräisch in der Zukunft
I don't want to take much time away from German right now, but I do really want to get my Hebrew up to a conversational level. I've been putting it off for too long. I think I'll start introducing it after after New Year's.

I mostly want to focus on conversational ability, so Pimsleur will be my main resource. I do also have the primer and first book of Hebrew - A Language Course, which my mother uses to teach Hebrew students.

Eventually I'll want to pick up a copy of Assimil l'hébreu and start in on Duolingo Hebrew, but not until I have the bandwidth for it.
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Deinonysus
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Posts: 1216
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Re: An opera fan's log - Focus on German. Also working on French and wanderlusting Norwegian.

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Nov 28, 2018 9:24 pm

I've been spending a lot of time with Duolingo. Although I have made good progress with German, I've been hit with the Wanderlust bug and spent time on several other languages as well:

Swedish
I was curious about this because I thought it might be different enough from Danish to keep it separate but not get confused. NOPE! It's right in the uncanny valley. I did the first skill, "basics", and I could always guess kind of what a word should be, but it would always be wrong.

One thing I do really like about Swedish is how clear the pitch accent is. Norwegian's is a bit more subtle and I'm still having trouble hearing the difference between the two accents. But I was still drawn more to Norwegian.

Norwegian
I did the first level in Duolingo and it felt extremely comfortable after having spent some time on Danish. I ended up going back to it later and I'm still working on it now. Since it turned into a longer Wanderlust excursion than the others, I'll go into more detail below.

The Scandinavian languages made me think about the one FSI category 1 language I've never taken a look at:

Romanian
I finally got around to watching the full Langfocus video on this, which is excellent! I also did a small amount of the Duolingo course. Some features that I thought were interesting:
  • The definite article is a suffix, like in the North Germanic languages
  • There are five cases, but only three declensions since nominative and accusative merged, as did nominative and genative. There is also a separate vocative case. This setup reminds me a bit of Esperanto, which has an accusative case, but dative gets no marker so it's basically merged with nominative.
  • It's the only Romance language with three genders

And spending time with the most grammar-heavy of the Romance language got me interested in the OG:

Latin
I impulse bought a copy of Lingua Latina a while ago, and I also picked up a battered copy of Wheelock's Latin for a couple bucks, so I had plenty of materials to sate my curiosity. I only spent an hour or less on Latin.

Esperanto
I saw a great video on conlangs on Reddit the other day:
https://vimeo.com/12197673

And of course, I couldn't watch that without spending some time on Esperanto. Aside for Norwegian, that's the language I spent the most time on this week. I restarted the Duolingo tree from scratch and got it up to level 6.

But after all that, I just couldn't stay away from:

Norwegian again
I did actually briefly flirt with Norwegian before studying Icelandic and Danish, but I was still surprised how easily I was able to switch to (at least written) Norwegian. The spelling changes are easy to get used to. The main difference seems to be that that "nd" turns into "nn" and a lot of "æ"s turn into "e"s. And spelling is normalized in objective pronouns to match "jeg", so "mig" becomes "meg".

One thing I'm focusing on is to get the genders right, especially feminine words that Duolingo accepts but doesn't necessarily teach. I figure that it's easy to switch the feminine words to common gender, but it would probably be difficult to divide all common words into male and female once you just learn them all as common. Knowing the masculine-feminine split will probably also make my life easier when I get back to Icelandic.

In general, I can guess the gender based on German. This seems to work between 2/3 and 3/4 of the time. The easiest gender to spot is neuter since it's mandatory in all forms of written Norwegian and Duolingo will always use it.

Some gender differences between German and Norwegian:

EnglishGermanNorwegian
the appleder Apfel (m)eplet (n)
the horsedas Pferd (n)hesten (m)
the catdie Katze (f)katten (m)
the spiderdie Spinne (f)edderkoppen (m)

Danish is causing a lot more trouble with spoken Norwegian than written, as could probably be expected. I'm going through Pimsleur Norwegian and working on dropping my Danish habits. I just finished lesson one, so I'll have more time to get used to it, depending on whether Norwegian will decide to let me get back to full-time German or it wants to stick around for a while.

German

In German class, we've been going over dative prepositions, accusative prepositions, and prepositions that are accusative if they describe motion or dative if they just describe location. I have the dative prepositions memorized, and I'm trying to memorize the accusative prepositions too, and while I'm at it, why not the other ones too? I'm sure there are prepositions that are left out, these are just the main ones.

Immer Dativ
  • aus
  • außer
  • bei
  • mit
  • nach
  • seit
  • von
  • zu
Immer Akkusativ
  • bis
  • durch
  • entlang
  • für
  • gegen
  • ohne
  • um
Wechselpräpositionen (Dative oder Akkusativ)
  • an
  • auf
  • hinter
  • in
  • neben
  • über
  • unter
  • vor
  • zwischen
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