Chove's Log

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chove
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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 » Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:16 pm

Today I managed to get my German assignment done and submitted before the deadline, which was a relief. It wasn't impossibly horrible once I actually started on it, but it stressed me out a lot so I kept putting it off.

I've been wondering if I should give up on Polish as being really difficult and I've not got very far after all this time, but I also feel like I've gone too far to quit. It's quite intimidating though.
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chove
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:40 am

chove wrote:I've been wondering if I should give up on Polish as being really difficult and I've not got very far after all this time, but I also feel like I've gone too far to quit. It's quite intimidating though.


I've been thinking about this, and it might just be that I feel a lack of resources for Polish? My other languages I can find something that's fairly comfortable to read, but with Polish there's a lot less available and it's not really grabbing me at the moment.

Meanwhile I managed to read Spanish again, it was another chapter of Habitacion de los Reptiles, which I am quite enjoying still. Read it on the Kindle so I was able to look up unknown words, but there weren't an alarming amount of those this time.
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chove
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:01 pm

I went back to DuoLingo Polish, which is variable. https://www.duolingo.com/skill/pl/Quest ... -and-notes this for example seems like a lot to introduce in one lesson just after the second checkpoint, given that you'll likely get only one practice sentence for each one at best. I'm not convinced DL is a great format for teaching Polish, but then Polish is a language where you have to learn a lot of grammar early on to be able to say anything. If Spanish is "an easy language to speak badly" then Polish is "a difficult language to speak terribly."

My German course is doing hstory topics at the moment, so it's easier to engage with it because I do actually want to know what the huge blocks of text are about.

edited to add: And I ran into the word "jodido" in A Series of Unfortunate Events and... I assume it doesn't mean in that context what me and Google translate thought it meant? "get in the jodido jeep" -- is it about as offensive as 'damn' is in English?
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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).
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Thu Feb 18, 2021 12:58 am

Spanish:
I downloaded some podcasts from a radio station https://play.cadenaser.com/tag/historia/ that I found playing around with the tool/app/??? linked to in this thread: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=16567 I just searched up spme history-related words and took some stuff that looked interesting. I added the files to my MP3 player that I used to listen to podcasts while trying to sleep. (My anxiety means it can take me ages to get to sleep, and podcasts give me something to focus on to stop me worrying about everything that pops into my head.) My listening skills do seem to have improved with practice, I still slow most YouTube videos a wee bit but I can catch more at full speed than I used to.

German:
My course linked to this: https://www.berlin.de/mauer/geschichte/ which has some articles in German on the history of the Berlin Wall.
https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/ is a similar sort of thing, the Fluchten section has some stories about people trying to flee to the West, incluing the East German border guard who famously leapt over barbed wire when there happened to be a cameraman in the area.
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chove
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Thu Feb 25, 2021 5:35 am

My main problem with Duolingo French so far is that a lot of sentences need a le/la/les or a du/de/des and I can't work out how to tell which ones need it and which ones don't. Like, sometimes it's "le francais" and sometimes just "francais" and I have no idea which is when. I *think* I need de if there's a noun with no article? Maybe? Anyone know of a good place to find out what the actual rules are?
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Ale
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby Ale » Thu Feb 25, 2021 11:29 am

chove wrote:My main problem with Duolingo French so far is that a lot of sentences need a le/la/les or a du/de/des and I can't work out how to tell which ones need it and which ones don't. Like, sometimes it's "le francais" and sometimes just "francais" and I have no idea which is when. I *think* I need de if there's a noun with no article? Maybe? Anyone know of a good place to find out what the actual rules are?

I'm a beginner, so take this with a grain of salt.

When you say that you don't know when you should use le français vs français alone, could it be because in one case it is a noun and in the other it is an adjective?

J'aime le français: Meaning "I like French", in which French is a noun.
J'aime le cinéma français: Meaning "I like french cinema", in which french is an adjective.

Regarding du/de la/des, maybe it's easier if you remember that du is a contraction for de le? For example, "children imagination" in French:

L'imagination des enfants: des is a contraction of de les.

du/de la/des are also the "articles partitifs", which are used when you are talking about a part of something uncountable. For example, let's say you want to say in French "I want wine". Wine is uncountable, so you need to specify you want some (a part of) wine:

Je veux du vin

Hope this helps.
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cjareck
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby cjareck » Thu Feb 25, 2021 11:56 am

chove wrote:Anyone know of a good place to find out what the actual rules are?

What do you need rules for? In a real conversation, you will have no time to think about the rules. I would recommend looking at FSI and/or DLI course where they are surely drilled thoroughly so you will be able to produce the necessary word naturally. ;)
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Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


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Caromarlyse
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby Caromarlyse » Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:13 pm

chove wrote:My main problem with Duolingo French so far is that a lot of sentences need a le/la/les or a du/de/des and I can't work out how to tell which ones need it and which ones don't. Like, sometimes it's "le francais" and sometimes just "francais" and I have no idea which is when. I *think* I need de if there's a noun with no article? Maybe? Anyone know of a good place to find out what the actual rules are?

The grammaire progressive du français that I have, has several chapters on the rules. So, e.g.:

J'ai invité des voisins. Des voisins sont venus. = plus de 1 ou pas tous
J'ai invité les voisins. Les voisins sont venus. = tous ou connus

J'aime les pâtes. J'ai horreur des pâtes. (avoir horreur de + les)

de + nom avec article = valeur concrète - le directeur de la banque = son directeur
de + nom sans article = valeur abstraite - un directeur de banque = type de directeur

I've got the highest level of this book, but presumably the various rules will be introduced bit by bit from the very beginning of the series. Or if you don't want a workbook, it sounds like you just need a reference grammar book.
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chove
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:50 pm

cjareck wrote:
chove wrote:Anyone know of a good place to find out what the actual rules are?

What do you need rules for? In a real conversation, you will have no time to think about the rules. I would recommend looking at FSI and/or DLI course where they are surely drilled thoroughly so you will be able to produce the necessary word naturally. ;)


I plan to avoid actual conversations wherever possible :D French is a language I'd like to be able to read and some writing would be nice as well. Also I just like knowing the rules for things like that. It's nerdy fun!
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chove
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Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:55 pm

Caromarlyse wrote:The grammaire progressive du français that I have, has several chapters on the rules. So, e.g.:

J'ai invité des voisins. Des voisins sont venus. = plus de 1 ou pas tous
J'ai invité les voisins. Les voisins sont venus. = tous ou connus

J'aime les pâtes. J'ai horreur des pâtes. (avoir horreur de + les)

de + nom avec article = valeur concrète - le directeur de la banque = son directeur
de + nom sans article = valeur abstraite - un directeur de banque = type de directeur


That looks a bit terrifying. I'll see what I can find in terms of a grammar book.
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