2021: A Spanish Odyssey

[Jaleel10]

Congrats, big bro o7. I'm writing the DELE B2 in November, I hope it goes just as well haha

Shame on you for not letting me know that you started studying Spanish tho. You just made a new rival.

[zjones]

Wow, great results on your B2! Your writing and reading were both perfect scores, I'm so impressed! Not that I didn't think you would ace the test , but it's still incredible to me. I totally understand how exhausting and scary the speaking section can feel. The B1 speaking test was much more stressful than I expected. Great score, though!

[Melkor]

I just got my DELF results... Total note 96/100

You and Zelda are precious gems on this forum! I am inspired!

[Skynet]

Thank-you so much for the support! I am still very surprised by those scores, and am happy to see that @zjones performed even better in her DELF!

Shame on you for not letting me know that you started studying Spanish tho.

In my defence, it was an unplanned foray into the language as I had initially express my interest in Dutch (which turned out to be too similar to German for me to continue with).

I know that I had intended on reviewing all the courses that I used in my DELF B2 preparation, but I am going to delay that until after my exams, which will start on the 8th of April and finish on the 24th of April. I also have my FRM Level 2 (18 May), CFA Level 1 (15 June) and CAIA Level 2 (sometime in Sept, but I have not registered for it yet) to study for, in addition to my thesis (I am doing it a semester early), PhD applications (what a nightmare!!!) and writing academic papers (I am yet to get published in English, yet alone my wishful thinking of getting published in French by the end of the year!)

Spanish:
SWOT: 42/112
We had a dance group from Argentina (!!) who came to perform at the university. I really enjoyed their malambo because I find it to be very graceful. They came at an opportune moment indeed, and gave me a new lease of life (or Spanish, to be precise). Whilst I cannot tell spoken Spanish apart from Portuguese (although I can see the written differences), Argentinian Spanish sounds better than the Iberian Spanish in SWOT. Perhaps I will fall in love with the language after all.

How I got NAGD* by German:
*Acronym for the 4 German cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative.
GWOT: 125/126
GWOT is the most challenging Assimil course that I have ever used (and I have used six so far)! That said, my understanding of grammar is still woefully inadequate (despite completing DLI German Basic) and I need advice on what I should use to improve it. German declensions are diabolical, and they are apparently much easier than Russian declensions! My girlfriend has been strongly encouraging me to learn Russian, to which I always reply that she should only pontificate on my learning Russian once she has learnt Arabic and Mandarin. Returning from present digressions, I am going to open a thread to get help from the members. Not necessary, as a thread already exists.. Recommendations: Übungsgrammatik für Anfänger A, B & C (Hueber), Klipp und Klar (Klett), PMP: German Problem Solver, Schaum's German Grammar, German for Reading (K. Sandberg), German Quickly (A. Wilson) and Reading German History (Hueber). Amazon has glowing reviews for K. Sandberg's and A. Wilson's books, and since they both state that their respective courses can be completed within 100 hours, I may work with those until the summer, where I intend to use the FSI German Basic and Linguaphone Advanced-to-Expert German courses to increase my inexistent oral German automaticity.

French:
Finished: CLE Communication PdF (365 L, Int.)
Continuing: CLE Grammaire PdF (400 L, Ava.) and CLE Orthographe PdF (405 L, Ava.) C'mon, can these courses finish already!? They are becoming such a drag, but a certain disposition of mine prevents me from dropping them. (Skynet's Paradox)

[Melkor]

I am on the verge of getting NAGD to death by German. It is getting too complicated, and I am becoming very discouraged by my lack of progress.

[Skynet]

Mischievous Rant:
There are several faculty members who do not seem to understand the very simple concept that it is extremely impolite to speak in a foreign language when there are non-speakers within earshot. Whenever we attend university functions, they immediately jettison me from their conversations by speaking in Greek and Turkish. It got so bad that I would bring something to keep me occupied (read: a diabolical Sudoku puzzle book). On one occasion, I asked them to speak in English and I was immediately excoriated and told "It's our country, so we can speak our language. You came here, so you must learn." After two semesters of my patience being whittled away at, I realised that these lecturers and support staff would not change.

To deal with my impenitent co-workers, I simply resolved to speak English in my normal tone and cadence, and to use my French and nascent German at every single opportunity presented to me when students would talk to me outside of the classroom. After a fortnight of this brinksmanship, I struck gold when highly regarded professors from Germany, France and Switzerland came for an academic convention. I only spoke French and German with them, and made sure that any attempt to change the language to English was rendered ineffective. I could tell that the local university staff members were very annoyed that they had been shut out of the conversations.

On the last day of the conference, we had a dinner, and I chose to sit next to my new German and French buddies. The highlight of the night was interpreting conversations from German to French and vice versa! Whilst I do not drink, these professors certainly did! Boy, did they get rowdy! Of course, I did nothing to extinguish their jovial mood because I was looking for three things: 1) speaking practice 2) making contacts and most importantly, 3) deliberately goading my faculty members to dare ask me to speak in English. Christmas clearly came early this year because the same person who had given me the jingoistic "It's our country, so we can speak our language. You came here, so you must learn" speech had the temerity to demand that I switch to English so that they (domestic lecturers) could also follow the conversation. Instead of going nuclear and leaving a mushroom cloud over the horizon (which I should have done), I sarcastically told him, "Aren't you having a deja vu?" He was extremely livid, but could do nothing as he certainly had no soapbox upon which to extol the virtues of conversational inclusiveness.

If the recidivists do not change their ways on Monday, the War of the Words (sorry H. G. Wells) will be officially declared.

Exams:
1. School exams have been harrowing!
2. FRM Level 2 on 18 May in Dubai, UAE was better than expected.
3. CFA Level 1 is on 15 June in Athens, Greece. That one is a disaster waiting to happen, because I have two chapters (out of six) left to revise.
4. CAIA Level 2 is on 26 Sept in Tel-Aviv, Israel and I have not even opened a book yet. (My FSI German project is in jeopardy!)
I have to keep sitting my exams in different countries because I have a passport that usually gets costly rejection responses from the embassies in the EU. It’s a miracle that Greece said yes this time! I should just get an EU residency permit the good old fashioned way: by simply demanding it!

Research Papers:
I have submitted three papers and hope that at least one gets published. Talons, claws, paws and fingers crossed.

French:
I have finally finished CLE Grammaire PdF and CLE Orthographe. I am aware that I owe many people here a review of all the French exam prep courses that I used for my B2… but I have been dreadfully busy. Currently doing Assimil Business French (1st time) and Linguaphone Business French (1st time). The latter has really good drills.

German:
Redoing both GWOT and NGWE. That should keep me busy until my CFA exam on 15 June.
Apparently German is the most difficult of the Germanic languages, and it should be smooth sailing from here. I hope that is factual, and not deceptive marketing to leave me holding the bag when I eventually study Dutch. My greatest regret will always be that I did not start with German last summer, before French, as the former requires far more time and effort than the latter.

Spanish:
SWOT: 93/112
Perhaps I am getting a ‘discount’ from knowing French, but Spanish really is the easiest language that I have attempted to learn. I am really impressed with SWOT, and the fact that Spanish orthography has remained stable for ages. I am likely to pick up Portuguese after Spanish, because whilst Portuguese sounds vastly different to Spanish, they are reasonably similar on paper. I wonder, is there an Assimil Portuguese Without Toil in either English (ideally!) or French?

[Skynet]

The semester is finally over and I somehow survived without losing my sanity!

The CFA L1 exam in Athens, Greece was much better than I expected. I flew back the next day to start a week of gruelling examinations. I did manage to go see the Acropolis of Athens and was amazed at how magnificent it was in reality. Reading about it for years in NatGeo monthlies and watching Ancient Megastructures in my youth just did not prepare me for what I saw. What once started as a Bronze Age Mycenaen megaron ~8,000 years ago survived empires, wars and the ravages of time. It's a good thing that Ancient Greek is on my 2021 to-do list!

German:
Completed GWOT and NGWE for the second time, and am now debating redoing DLI German Basic or FSI German Basic this summer.

French:
Assimil Bus. French: 27/40; Linguaphone Bus. French: 27/60
Certainly not challenging for me now, but my listening and speaking automaticity have improved.
Started reading " Le casse du siecle" par Michael Lewis today. I do regret not having purchased the audiobook for L-R purposes.

Spanish:
NESP: 8/109
Completed SWOT and am using Le nouvel espagnol sans peine, marking my first foray into French-based Assimil courses. Having your L3 and L5 side-by-side is a very enlightening experience as I am able to spot similarities between the two, which are stronger than with English.

Portuguese
After jettisoning the idea of any other Germanic languages, I have scoured the internet for Assimil Le portugais sans peine and cannot find the audio. I am sending an SOS to the forum members.

[addylad]

Congrats! I took the DELF B2 earlier this month. How long did your results take to come through?

Destination C1?

[Iversen]

On one occasion, I asked them to speak in English and I was immediately excoriated and told "It's our country, so we can speak our language. You came here, so you must learn." After two semesters of my patience being whittled away at, I realised that these lecturers and support staff would not change.

And why should they change? You have got an excellent opportunity to add a a couple of new languages, and it would be a shame to loose that opportunity.

I remember that I once read about an old German professor who taught really old languages, from the time where your daily newpaper would be written in Cuneiform script. He told a student to do some work on a certain text, but the student wailed that he didn't know Luwian (or whatever the language in question was called), to which the professor retorted: "Then LEARN it, for gods sake - do you think this is a Kindergarten?"

That professor may have chased some students away, but those that remained would know a lot of funny old languages - and how to learn things fast when they had to.

[PeterMollenburg]

Impressive advancement there Skynet, in numerous languages. I sincerely believe you are setting some kind of a new benchmark on this forum. The speed at which you achieved a certified B2 level in French, after having ploughed through masses of French courses, and now taking another look you’ve also completed considerably huge amounts of German, throw in some Spanish, a MASSIVE university schedule, and numerous other aspects of your life requiring significant attention... I honestly am in awe. I look up to you now, honestly!