Chove's Log

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chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Sat May 15, 2021 10:56 pm

Today I've been trying to learn about French pronunciation in terms of formal rules rather than just copying things I hear, because even though I don't plan to *speak* French I like to know what the sounds are when I'm reading the words. Some stuff I have learned: final e is usually not pronounced, but the preceeding consonant is; C, F, L and R are pronounced at the end of words; h is always silent. That clears some things up from my working-hypothesis of "it's like Spanish but you only say half the letters in each word" :lol:

I am very bad at finishing books even in English, so I'm bouncing around a bit in what I've been reading. I managed to get Learning With Texts to work on my PC (which took approximately "freakin ages" as I am not great with computers) and pasted in some semi-randomly-chosen things from Project Gutenberg. (Oh, by the way -- does anyone know what format you need to use to upload texts into LWT?) Am also reading some things on my Kindle because the dictionary function is great. Mostly in Spanish but a bit in German as well.

For listening I have downloaded some podcasts recommended on this forum, these being "Eine Stunde History" (which I can generally get the gist of and more if it's a topic I'm familiar with) and "Un Idioma Sin Fronteras" (from RTVE's website, also got a travel one from there but I can't remember what it's called sorry).
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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2114
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun May 16, 2021 6:07 pm

chove wrote:I managed to get Learning With Texts to work on my PC (which took approximately "freakin ages" as I am not great with computers) and pasted in some semi-randomly-chosen things from Project Gutenberg. (Oh, by the way -- does anyone know what format you need to use to upload texts into LWT?) Am also reading some things on my Kindle because the dictionary function is great. Mostly in Spanish but a bit in German as well.

Did you use rdearman's Docker app for LWT? Otherwise, trust me, even if you are great with computers, installing LWT is not simple.
To upload to LWT, I use copy-and-paste from both plain text files and Word docx files. I've done dozens of files, and the text and docx files always work.
With docx files, sometimes there is a paragraph marker at the end of every line. This can be useful for poetry, but it is a bit gawky for prose, so I remove the paragraph marker from all but the last line of the paragraph before uploading.
Hope this helps.
1 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
chove wrote:I managed to get Learning With Texts to work on my PC (which took approximately "freakin ages" as I am not great with computers) and pasted in some semi-randomly-chosen things from Project Gutenberg. (Oh, by the way -- does anyone know what format you need to use to upload texts into LWT?) Am also reading some things on my Kindle because the dictionary function is great. Mostly in Spanish but a bit in German as well.

Did you use rdearman's Docker app for LWT? Otherwise, trust me, even if you are great with computers, installing LWT is not simple.
To upload to LWT, I use copy-and-paste from both plain text files and Word docx files. I've done dozens of files, and the text and docx files always work.
With docx files, sometimes there is a paragraph marker at the end of every line. This can be useful for poetry, but it is a bit gawky for prose, so I remove the paragraph marker from all but the last line of the paragraph before uploading.
Hope this helps.


I did try his Docker app yes, but I couldn't get that method to work. I got an error message that mentioned BIOS (?) and got too scared to continue in case I broke something important on my PC. In the end I managed to work out how to get Easy PHP DevServer running and used that way instead. I've just spent a bit of time copy-pasting articles from Wikipedia on topics that looked interesting. Only problem there so far is having to find and remove footnote annotations in the text. LWT is great, just not the easiest thing to get working. :oops:
2 x

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2114
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun May 16, 2021 9:01 pm

chove wrote:
I did try his Docker app yes, but I couldn't get that method to work. I got an error message that mentioned BIOS (?) and got too scared to continue in case I broke something important on my PC. In the end I managed to work out how to get Easy PHP DevServer running and used that way instead. I've just spent a bit of time copy-pasting articles from Wikipedia on topics that looked interesting. Only problem there so far is having to find and remove footnote annotations in the text. LWT is great, just not the easiest thing to get working. :oops:

If you don't understand how BIOS works, (a) you are not alone and (b) you were quite correct not to make changes in it.
Besides, if you successfully installed LWT the "hard" way, then it doesn't matter.
As for footnotes, I remove them if there are not too many. If there are too many, and a few of the texts I use have dozens of them, I learned to ignore them. But they can be a pest, so I understand removing them.
3 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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chove
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Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Thu May 27, 2021 10:38 pm

I know I'm very "inefficient" but I enjoy it and that's what matters to me, since I am almost certainly never going to move to another country or do a job where I need a second language. Speaking of efficiency, how much reading is needed to make a noticable improvement? I feel like I got better at Spanish through a couple of easyish books (Harry Potter 1 and a kids history of Spain, along with one or two readers) and that's probably the sort of thing I should be doing with German now. Or is it? I don't know.

I am getting more done - in pretty much every aspect of my life - now that I am free to go at my own pace with things. And the university have said I can get a Certificate of Higher Education for having completed first year, which is a lot better than nothing so I've told them I'll take that and they're posting it out in the next month or so. Nice!
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chove
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Posts: 374
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Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:23 am

I'm finally getting towards the end of Charlie Und Die Schokoladenfabrik, I think I have about 50 pages left at this point. It's quite a horrible book, actually, I'd forgotten how much Roald Dahl somehow got away with in kids books! Someone just got turned into a blueberry! Reading is certainly enjoyable so I hope it's helping me as well. One thing I noticed in the past few days is that sometimes when I start reading in Spanish or German it seems like I can't understand anything, but if I press on it seems to start making more sense. I suppose that's me getting used to it again? Those first few minutes can be very off-putting, so I must try to remember that it does get better fairly quickly.
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chove
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Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Wed Jun 09, 2021 9:15 am

I finally finished Charlie Und Die Schokoladenfabrik, that felt like it took forever! That's the second book I've read in German, not sure what to go for next. Maybe I can find a children's history book for the Kindle, there's one about Ancient Rome that interests me and from the preview I reckon I could manage it with the Kindle dictionary. Going to read Karneval in Koln first which is less of a challenge but I've never actually finished it so I might as well.

I have been trying to diversify my language activities a bit, because textbooks get boring after a while and also quite stressful in some ways. I don't think I learn that well through exposure but I could be wrong about that, given that reading has certainly helped my Spanish. So I have (re)subscribed to Netflix and I started watching a German cookery show (I think it's called "Wer Kann, Der Kann" but it's listed as "Nailed It: Germany" on Netflix (UK)). I watched it in German with the German subtitles and managed to more or less follow what was going on. I'm also trying out the German subtitles while watching 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' in English. They have Voyager with Spanish options too, which saves me having to get the DVDs out when I want to watch one.

With Spanish and German I can read "above my level" in French and Dutch (in that I can read anything at all, really), which is nice. I kind of love Dutch so I'm doing a wee bit of that between other things, only about 15 - 20 minutes a day at most. It doesn't interfere with my German anything like as much now that my German's at a probably-lower-intermediate level, and if anything the cognates are helping with the odd German word that refuses to stick in my head. Like "benötigen" meaning "to need" which I can remember now because it sounds enough like "nodig" in Dutch which I managed to pick up more easily for some reason. (The German words I find hardest to remember tend to be the verbs, especially all those ones with the same prefix - separable or otherwise - that make them look/sound very similar.)

So generally I've been spending more time with languages recently, the occasional day of not feeling well aside. Even then I can sometimes manage to at least watch part of a TV show (Netflix remembers where I stopped previously, which is very handy). I was reading about "mass immersion" the other day, and the theory that you can learn a language by massive exposure to input, so hopefully a bit of input means a bit of improvement in what I already know.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Jun 09, 2021 9:27 am

chove wrote: I kind of love Dutch so I'm doing a wee bit of that between other things, only about 15 - 20 minutes a day at most.
I watched an enjoyable belgian-dutch comedy/crime programme called Professor T recently (available on Channel 4's catch up service).
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chove
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Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Wed Jun 23, 2021 10:25 pm

I don't really know what to put in this log, I don't think I have many significant "breakthroughs" or any interesting experiences (I don't travel even when there's no plague going around), so what sort of thing do people like to read in such things? Suggestions are welcome. I keep thinking "oh, I should write something in my log" and then I get a bit stuck for content people might be interested in.

Today I did quite a bit, including telling myself that I can't learn Dutch because I already have too much to be doing even on a hobby basis. It's just such a pretty language. I suppose it's not terribly "useful" but I like the sound of it. Also I am trying to actually buckle down and get on with Polish, I've been learning it for years yet I've probably done about 200-250 hours in total. Which I suppose means I'm about where I should be for time spent on it :lol: I've been thinking of hours as probably the best way to measure time spent learning, like there's that dude that does a language in three months because he puts the hours in. (I know he's controversial, but he does at least get something learned even if it's not the promised fluency.) At least that way I know I'm just lazy rather than stupid :lol:

Also I think my university course was a bit... not good. :( I've heard that one should generally not do a languages degree unless you're needing certification of some sort, but we had maybe 15 contact hours a year and no chance to speak outside of those hours unless we tracked down other students and put them on WhatsApp. I'm far too reclusive for that sort of thing. And more generally with taught courses you have to do what you're told to do that week, which can be very difficult if the topic's dull. The Open University seems to be very into social media and recycling as topics, I think we did those every year in both languages. It did keep me working fairly consistently, but I don't miss it and I'm a lot happier without the stress of essays and exams and so on. Though the essays were only about 500 words most of the time. That seems very short, but I never did languages at my old brick university so maybe that's about average. I can defintely see how it's possible to graduate from a language degree and barely be able to use the language.
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rdearman
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby rdearman » Thu Jun 24, 2021 9:10 am

humm... given the number of views and liked posts you've had, I think you're probably doing OK and people are interested. :)
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