Chove's Log

[badger]

Yeah, I find I can read more than I would have expected based on Spanish cognates, which is nice. Do you know if the grammar is similar as well? I see they have three verb groups and a subjunctive? The Spanish subjunctive is what most confuses me in Spanish, I still don't always know when to use it.

I'm not going to claim to know enough Spanish to be able to answer that properly. the subjunctive sounds very similar though, as I've still not really got the hang of it in French.

[chove]

Did a bit of Polish, which was Hugo Polish In Three Months and it was introducting perfective and imperfective aspects, which is something I was vaguely aware for a while but I've never got properly into it. Am I right in thinking the Polish imperfective is more or less like the Spanish imperfect (repeated actions, incomplete actions) and the perfective is like the preterite (actions completed in the past, one-off events)? If so then that's a lot less new stuff to have to get my head round, and a definite 'discount' from knowing Spanish! And the imperfective is like the 'default version' of a verb - the one you will encounter most - and then you (usually) add a few letters at the start and that gives you the prefective, which can only be used to talk about the past?

Is there any way to guess the other half of a perfective-imperfective pair or is it just a case of learning them all together? I know how to conjugate regular verbs in the present and past tenses, so I have that to work with at least.

I think German is the language I feel most comfortable in, presumably because I learned some in school (20 years ago now!) so I've had a bit of it in my head all that time. I do notice when I try to talk to myself in German it's easier than trying to do the same in Spanish, though when it comes to reading my Spanish is quite a bit better than my German. It's a matter of... how automatic it is? Just more practice I suppose.

[cjareck]

Did a bit of Polish, which was Hugo Polish In Three Months and it was introducting perfective and imperfective aspects, which is something I was vaguely aware for a while but I've never got properly into it. Am I right in thinking the Polish imperfective is more or less like the Spanish imperfect (repeated actions, incomplete actions) and the perfective is like the preterite (actions completed in the past, one-off events)? If so then that's a lot less new stuff to have to get my head round, and a definite 'discount' from knowing Spanish! And the imperfective is like the 'default version' of a verb - the one you will encounter most - and then you (usually) add a few letters at the start and that gives you the prefective, which can only be used to talk about the past?

I don't know any Spanish, but it seems to be like you write. You may also use perfective verbs in the future to show they you plan to complete something. The have no present tense.

Is there any way to guess the other half of a perfective-imperfective pair or is it just a case of learning them all together? I know how to conjugate regular verbs in the present and past tenses, so I have that to work with at least.

Well, I am not a grammarian, so the only way is to learn them. The general rule is that complete verbs have some prefixes, but they can also differ inside. It seems that shorter ones are complete. If you look at the pairs perhaps you start noticing some patterns.

grać - wygrać

pisać - napisać
rysować - narysować

robić - zrobić

polewać - polać
podlewać - podlać

otwierać - otworzyć
układać - ułożyć

and probably many more...

[chove]

I finally finished reading Pequeña historia de España! That took ages! Next up is an ebook called Historia Afroamericana: Una Guía Fascinante para entender los eventos y personas que moldearon la Historia de los Estados Unidos (long name is long), which seems to be a brief overview of African-American history and so probably not much I don't already know in terms of the history but it's a topic I'm interested in and as long as I'm reading something in Spanish that's the main thing.

So aside from bilungual readers I've now read two books in Spanish, albeit both for a younger audience (the other was - what else? - Harry Potter), I feel a bit proud of myself actually

[chove]

Downloaded a podcast series about El Ministerio del Tiempo, my Spanish listening ability is... not great. I suppose the only way to improve is to keep listening to things in Spanish, so I'll keep at it. It's quite intimidating and demoralising when I can't follow what's being said, but hopefully that will improve and my vocabulary should get better as I keep reading as well. Applied to join an EMdT Facebook group as well, I've never had a non-English fandom so we'll see how that goes. I just really like that show a lot.

Did a bit of Easy German on YouTube, wrote down some colloquial phrases and unknown words. What's nice is that my German is at a level where I can still see it improving fairly quickly.

Trying to learn some verbs in French -- the -er and -ir ones as well as avoir and etre. Since I'm aiming for reading knowledge I'm not focussing much on words I can recognise as cognates from English or Spanish, which is lazy I suppose but it means I have to cram less vocabulary early on. I don't want to move on until I feel comfortable with these verbs, I didn't focus enough on conjugation early on in Spanish and I still feel the consequences of that.

[chove]

Planning to get on with some Extensive Reading in a couple of languages, since it seems to have helped my Spanish a lot. Even though I didn't really like Harry Potter I'm going to try it in German as the least bad option I could find and well I do at least know the plot this time round which will help. Going to read primarily on the Kindle so I can look up unknown words, of which there may be a lot depending on the text and language. I also got a beginner's French reader and am mostly amazed at how much of it I can read through cognates and the very few words I've learned in the language itself. I'd like to get a reading ability in French, but I'm going about learning it very slowly.

Going to keep reading stuff in Spanish, probably stick with Sherlock Holmes for a while since I like those in English and can remember most of the plots.

Couldn't find anything easy enough in Polish, didn't want to get intimidated. Suggestions are welcome if you can think of something I could muddle through with a dictionary, I'd estimate I'm A1 maybe A2 at best, with gaps.

[cjareck]

Look for a series "Czytam sobie". There are books for small kids who are learning to read. As far as I remember, there are 3 levels of it. The first wan having really limited vocabulary. They are for example here: https://natuli.pl/pl/n/Seria-ksiazek-%E ... b8QAvD_BwE

[chove]

Look for a series "Czytam sobie". There are books for small kids who are learning to read. As far as I remember, there are 3 levels of it. The first wan having really limited vocabulary. They are for example here: https://natuli.pl/pl/n/Seria-ksiazek-%E ... b8QAvD_BwE

The problem with reading Polish is all the different forms of words, because of the cases etc. So I should probably try to at least acquaint myself with the rest of the cases before I try reading. I have no idea what my Polish vocabulary is, probably very small. I can follow the conversations on the beginners' Bloggy Polish podcasts, but Michel Thomas is more of a struggle to try and translate before the students do. I *think* I have an ebook in Polish, a very basic reader, I should try and find it again in the depths of my Kindle.

In other news, I've booked three iTalki lessons for the next fortnight -- one Spanish conversation and two German ones. One of the German tutors is someone I haven't worked with before, so I hope she's nice. Will look into doing more Spanish ones next time I top up my iTalki credit. German I kind of just want to see what level I can converse at before starting Upper-Intermediate German next semester. But I do think it's Spanish I need more speaking practice with, because my brain seems to see German as the "default foreign language" and it can be hard to stay on track with spoken Spanish for that reason. I'll try doing more self-talk in Spanish, I was using it on my pet rats earlier since it's not like they speak English anyway I can look words up on my phone if I need to while doing that.

Reading it proving to be interesting at least, because if nothing else I can absorb the content. Kind of bemused by how much French and Dutch I can read based on my knowledge of Spanish and German, that encourages me to keep going since I'm getting a "discount" on those from knowing related languages (for a certain value of "knowing" of course!).

[cjareck]

The problem with reading Polish is all the different forms of words, because of the cases etc. So I should probably try to at least acquaint myself with the rest of the cases before I try reading. I have no idea what my Polish vocabulary is, probably very small. I can follow the conversations on the beginners' Bloggy Polish podcasts, but Michel Thomas is more of a struggle to try and translate before the students do. I *think* I have an ebook in Polish, a very basic reader, I should try and find it again in the depths of my Kindle.

Well, look for morphogical analysys: http://morfeusz.sgjp.pl/demo/ It will tell you all possible grammar forms. Mayby this will help you.

[Mooby]

Couldn't find anything easy enough in Polish, didn't want to get intimidated. Suggestions are welcome if you can think of something I could muddle through with a dictionary, I'd estimate I'm A1 maybe A2 at best, with gaps.

I'd highly recommend Nowe Przygrody Mikołajka by Goscinny and Sempe - 640 pages of very enjoyable and accessible stories. Worth tracking down a copy.