Philipp's Super Challenge Log [EN, ES, NO]

[StringerBell]

English: Even in the first Harry Potter, which I’m reading at the moment, are words that I don’t know and it irks me. For example, gingerly, I couldn’t remember ever coming across that word and it’s kind of a distinct word. I know the root means redhead and – well – a root, but gently that’s far from obvious. The worrisome thing is that shortly after looking it up I encountered it again in a podcast. Either that is a crazy coincidence or lots of things are going over my head while I’m convinced that my listening comprehension is super-duper.

"gingerly" is a word that tends to pop up in literature, it's rare to hear it in spoken English, or anything written in a conversational-style, so I'm surprised you heard it in a podcast. I never thought about it being connected to redheads or roots (is it really?). Now I wonder about the etymology of that word!

Your writing in English is impressive. You said that it was a weakness for you since you've done almost all input with little output over the years, but as I was reading your entries, it was easy to forget that you weren't writing in your native language. I think you should give yourself more credit.

[devilyoudont]

Gingerly doesn't etymologically relate to ginger, meaning redhead, or ginger, meaning the edible root of a specific plant. The guess is that it comes from an Old French word, and then got modified closer and closer to the English word ginger randomly and accidentally over time.

[Jaleel10]

To come back to Harry Potter, I think that I found an error in the translation. But I might be wrong because I’m never really sure who is doing what to whom in Spanish. The original says: ”Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.” For context, Binns is a professor who gives a lecture to Harry’s class. The translation is: “Binns hablaba monótonamente, mientras escribía nombres y fechas, y confundía Emerico el Malvado con Ulrico el Chiflado.” Shouldn’t it be escribían and confundían? It’s the class (they) who confuse the dates and names, isn’t it? Maybe someone with a better command of the languages can help me out here.

I will try and answer, seeing as no one responded to you. Be warned!

I was gonna quote some mess from RAE but I just asked my friend lol. She says the author probably used ''la clase'' as the subject rather than ''ellos''. In Spanish, when a collective noun is the subject, the verb is always in the singular. Obviously nothing in Spanish is easy and there are always exceptions

Esta gente son asesinos - The plural corresponds to it when it appears in sentences with the verb ser whose attribute is not an adjective, but a noun.
La gente se acercaba y en cuanto veían la escena chillaban - The verb in plural is admissible if it corresponds to another sentence. In this case, the subject of 'veían' was 'ellos'

Good on for using Harry Potter PS to improve your reading comprehension. This is the 3rd time I have seen it mentioned this week. It must be a sign that I should give it another chance haha. It will be the first book I read after I have slogged through my graded readers. And I must commend you, your written English is great!

[Philipp]

Your writing in English is impressive. You said that it was a weakness for you since you've done almost all input with little output over the years, but as I was reading your entries, it was easy to forget that you weren't writing in your native language. I think you should give yourself more credit.

Thank you. Though I have to admit that I’m using a spellchecker and a dictionary. Without my writing would look different.

[Philipp]

@Jaleel10

Thanks for the explanation.

And yes give Harry Potter a try. I’m following your log and your Spanish is certainly better than mine, so I’m sure you’ll have no problem with it.

[Philipp]

A long overdue update from me. The truth is since the end of the last 6WC I didn't do any studying. In my defense, I had to finish some projects around the house before winter but I also lost some motivation. Now that the days get shorter and there is less else to do (at least until the annual Christmas craze starts) I make another attempt.

What I did do:

- Reading the Harry Potter series in English. When I started the Super Challenge I thought I would mainly read serious literature and now I've almost reached the 100 books threshold due to Harry Potter. Though, I've picked up some words and British phrases from the series. Admittedly not that much, but at least if a British person would tell me 'to keep my pecker up' I wouldn't flinch anymore.

- Listening to a lot of true crime podcasts in English. I think I learned some legal terminology from that.

- Listening to every RNE Documentos episode (Spanish documentary podcast) that spiked my interest. I really like this podcast. The production quality is great, but many episodes are about writers or poets I’ve never heard before. The problem with is twofold: I’m not that interested in high-brow cultural topics and I can’t follow without some familiarity about the topic beforehand.

- Watching several dubbed Netflix shows in Spanish. My listening comprehension is good enough now to follow the plot without subtitles. But dubbed shows are not that hard to understand and it feels somehow wrong to watch dubbed shows all the time. Sadly I can’t find anything that interests me in original Spanish on Netflix. I’m going to cancel my subscription for a while because I’m spending too much time in front of a screen anyway.

[Philipp]

My goals for the 6WC:

I signed up for Norwegian this time. As I said in my last post, I want to spend less time in front of a screen or rather spend my time in front of a screen better. I feel the last months all I did was dabbling around with various apps up to the point where it became stressful and unproductive. Like mindlessly doing a bit of Duolingo, Clozemaster, Memrise, etc. every day just to keep my streaks running without really learning anything. So for the next 6 weeks, as an experiment, my approach is quality over quantity and analog over digital.

Recently, I listened to an episode of the Fluent Show podcast from Kerstin Cable about language notebooks. I found this very inspiring, especially the picture gallery of beautiful notes from language learners. So I’m going to start a language journal for myself. I still have to figure out the specifics. For example, should I use one notebook for all languages or one for Norwegian and one for Spanish? How do I organize my notes so it doesn’t get messy, etc.. Luckily, where I live is a bank holiday today and tomorrow is a bridge day for me, so I’ve some free time. If anyone has some advice or links to share on this, I would grateful.

For the next 6 weeks, I will use the internet as a resource, but no more apps, no more SRS. Let’s see how this goes. Anki and Duolingo will still be around in mid-December.

My specific goals for the first week of the challenge:

Norwegian:

1. Take pretty notes
2. Getting an overview of Norwegian grammar
3. Reading 7 articles on Klar Tale
4. Doing 5 lessons on ‘Norwegian on the Web’
5. If time, listening to NRK Ekko

Spanish:

1. Take pretty notes
2. Reviewing 14 chapters in Gramatica de uso..
3. Listening to 14 lessons of Language Transfer Spanish
4. Reading/Listening 7 articles on veinte mundos
5. If time, watch Spanish movie(s) with [CC]

[Philipp]

Somehow I don’t manage to update my log regularly (weekly). By and large, I’m happy with my efforts since my last update. It took me a couple of days to get into the rhythm of studying daily again but now it’s much easier. I’ve begun a language notebook and already filled 50 pages. It’s not as neat and as creative as I wanted to or imagined, but I made a start.

The experiment that I don’t use any apps is also working fine. I don’t miss them except for Anki, because I haven’t figured out a way to learn vocab without SRS. Everything that I come up with seems less effective and more cumbersome than doing 15-something minutes of Anki a day. I use a notebook to write down the words I want to learn, but obviously the audio is missing and I think it helps me a lot to remember words when I also hear them. After the 6WC I will reintroduce Anki in my routine again. I’ll just have to do it in moderation.

Norwegian: I finished both NOW courses and started with Mysteriet om Nils del 2. The NOW courses cover material up to A2 and the book is for level B1-B2 so that fits. I haven’t spent much time with the book yet, but my first impression is good. It’s completely in Norwegian, which is nice. I though about getting the books Mista recommended to me a couple of months ago, but shipping to Germany is too expensive if offered at all.

What else did I do? Watching a lot of TV. My Netflix subscription expired lately so I thought I use the remaining time and bingewatch as much as possible. I can’t say I’m unhappy that my subscription ended. Maybe I‘m just over peak-TV, but everything I saw lately was just mediocre. Anyway, I watched Fallet, because it was mentioned here in the Nordic group. It‘s in Swedish and English, but I watched with Norwegian subtitles, which was interesting. There were actually parts I could understand in Swedish with my shaky knowledge of Norwegian. Obviously knowing German also helps. My impression is that Swedish is closer to German than Norwegian in terms of vocabulary. I also watched Nobel (think Homeland set in Norway) and two seasons of Side om side.

Spanish: I‘m at my third attempt at working through my red grammar book and made it to chapter 28. I hope this attempt last a little longer than the former ones. Also, no surprise here, lots of TV: Some movies (Tip: Don‘t watch Bajo la piel de lobo. Worst film I‘ve seen in ages) and Narcos: Mexico. What I always seem to remember from these shows are the curse words. And I promise I‘m not even actively trying. I can hardly order a cup of coffee, but I can curse in European and Mexican Spanish now, which is a questionable kind of progress, but progress nonetheless.

[Philipp]

Den seks uken utfordringen er nesten over og det er tid for en sammenfatning. Dessuten må jeg øve å skrive på norsk. Det går ikke så verst med norsk. I mellomtiden kan jeg forstår mye, især lesning går bra. Vel, lesning av lettleste tekster går bra. I forgårs har jeg prøvd å lese noen artikler hos Aftenposten. Det var vanskelig. Å være ærlig er jeg litt slutten. De siste ukene har jeg lest Klar Tale daglig og jeg har tenkt at norsken min er god nok å lese Aftenposten. Men tydeligvis er det ikke så. Ordskatten min er for liten. Er ordskatt det korrekte ordet? Trolig ikke, men jeg har håpt at det finnes en bokstavelig oversettelse av det tyske ordet Worschatz og lette etter det. Jeg liker ordskatt bedre enn vokabular eller ordforråd. Ideen til ordet er vakker. Tilbake til læring norsk: Vokabularet mitt er ikke så godt. Hvis jeg er heldig kan jeg gjetter betydning til et ord. Men ofte er det ikke mulig eller jeg se etter et ord og bare da merker jeg at ordet er beslektet med et tysk ord. Jeg trengte flere måneder å forstå at gulrøtter er Gelbe Rüben. Egentlig gelbe Wurzel, men det kommer ut på nesten det samme. Noen ganger er jeg treg.

Lytting er ikke lett også. Når jeg se på TV, trenger jeg undertekster å følge handlingen. Noen ganger forstår jeg bra og andre ganger nesten ingenting. Kanskje er det avhengig av den forskjellige dialektene. Det er det samme nå jeg hører på radio. Jeg er glad i NRK Ekko. De har mange programmer og ofte emner hvilke jeg finner spennende. Dessuten ser jeg serien side om side igjen. Jeg har allerede sett flere episoder til serien for noen måneder siden da jeg begynte å lærer norsk. Det har blitt enklere for meg og jeg kan forstå flere til vitsene nå. Alt i alt er jeg fornøyd med min fremskritt i de siste ukene. (Korreksjoner er helt velkommen).

[Mista]

Den seks uken utfordringen Seks-ukers-utfordringen er nesten over og det er tid for en sammenfatning (oppsummering). Dessuten må jeg øve på å skrive på norsk. Det går ikke så verst med norsk. I mellomtiden kan jeg forstår mye, især lesning går bra. Vel, lesning av lettleste tekster går bra. I forgårs har jeg prøvd å lese noen artikler hos i Aftenposten. Det var vanskelig. For Å være ærlig er jeg litt slutten sliten. De siste ukene har jeg lest Klar Tale daglig og jeg har tenkt at norsken min er god nok til å lese Aftenposten. Men tydeligvis er det ikke så. Ordskatten min er for liten. Er ordskatt det korrekte ordet? (Ordforråd! ) Trolig ikke, men jeg har håpte at det finnes fantes en bokstavelig oversettelse av det tyske ordet Worschatz og lette etter det. Jeg liker ordskatt bedre enn vokabular eller ordforråd. Ideen til bak ordet er vakker. Tilbake til læring av norsk: Vokabularet mitt er ikke så godt. Hvis jeg er heldig kan jeg gjetter betydningen til et ord. Men ofte er det ikke mulig eller jeg ser etter et ord og bare da merker jeg at ordet er beslektet med et tysk ord. Jeg trengte flere måneder på å forstå at gulrøtter er Gelbe Rüben. Egentlig gelbe Wurzel, men det kommer ut på nesten det samme. Noen ganger er jeg treg.

Lytting er heller ikke lett også. Når jeg ser på TV, trenger jeg undertekster for å følge handlingen. Noen ganger forstår jeg bra og andre ganger nesten ingenting. Kanskje er det avhengig av den forskjellige dialektene. Det er det samme når jeg hører på radio. Jeg er glad i NRK Ekko. De har mange programmer og ofte emner hvilke som jeg (finner) syns er spennende. Dessuten ser jeg serien side om side igjen. Jeg har allerede sett flere episoder til av serien for noen måneder siden da jeg begynte å lærer norsk. Det har blitt enklere for meg og jeg kan forstå flere til av vitsene nå. Alt i alt er jeg fornøyd med mine(/mitt) fremskritt i de siste ukene. (Korreksjoner er helt velkommen).

The last time I read your Norwegian writing, I commented on the word order. Clearly, you have made progress since then, because this time, the word order is absolutely perfect. The mistakes you are making now are mostly at a more advanced level. Preposistions, of course, are notoriously difficult in any language. The other major area is subodinate clauses, which per definition involve more advanced language. You will probably get better at it as you start to read more advanced texts.

Preposistions are to some extent something you just have to learn in context. Some prepositions belong naturally together with certain verbs or adjectives, and it's useful to pay attention to that when you see it. Concerning the prepositions "til" and "av", they both belong within the semantic field of the genitive, but you can note that "av" is always used in the partitive meaning, so with words like "flere", numerals, etc, you always have to use "av". Also, when you wrote "ideen til ordet", this is grammatically speaking correct, but it indicates that the word was the one that had the idea.

In a few places, you mix up present and infinitive forms of the verb. While they don't cause any problems of understanding, they are very noticable and will tend to pull the overall impression of your language level down.

Finally, I have to disappoint you: you really should use the word "ordforråd" rather than any of the other two.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions about anything I said.