jonm's occasional log: Romance family Super Challenge

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
jonm
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
x 667

Re: jonm's occasional log: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese

Postby jonm » Fri Dec 20, 2019 6:22 am

lichtrausch wrote:Do you find yourself warming up to tonal languages thanks to Burmese?

Sorry for the slow reply! Turns out I have a lot to say about this.

One way that dabbling in Burmese has helped me warm up to tonal languages is that it's inspired me to read about tonogenesis, and particularly tonogenesis in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area. I find it quite interesting (I've just posted about it here), and I think that's made me at least a little more motivated to study tonal languages in the future.

Since this hasn't come up in the log, some context on my previous effort to learn a tonal language:

Ten years ago, I lived in Hanoi for almost a year, and I was pretty motivated to learn Vietnamese. I had done some Pimsleur before I got there, and while there I took classes, drilled old-school flashcards, read children books, and had halting but often fairly involved conversations.

I enjoyed it, but it was slow going. The sound system of Vietnamese was full of things that were new to me: preglottalized and implosive [ʔɓ] and [ʔɗ], labial-velar [k͡p] and [ŋ͡m], unrounded back vowels, lots of diphthongs and triphthongs... It's really a feast of interesting sounds, but this was before I studied phonetics, and while I was game to try and imitate these sounds, it was challenging without a clear understanding of what needed to happen in the mouth.

And then six tones. For a long time, I had to think about the tone of each and every syllable I produced, a bit like a novice guitar player who has to think about the fingering of each chord. Eventually the tones did start to gel, but I wouldn't say they ever became automatic and flowing. And then I left Vietnam and forgot almost everything I had learned.

I didn't study any tonal languages between Vietnamese and Burmese, but since joining the forum and filling up my plate at the language buffet, I've considered other tonal and/or analytic languages from China and Southeast Asia: Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, and Khmer (which isn't tonal).

I've had good experiences traveling in China, Thailand, and Cambodia, so in that sense I'm well disposed towards the languages.

Mandarin would be really practical, given its size and importance. Also, I'm interested in Japanese and maybe Korean, and I generally prefer to follow the flow of vocabulary "downstream," learning classical languages before modern descendants and donors of loanwords before recipients. Given that preference, it would make sense to study some variety of Chinese, but I've opted for Japanese instead.

I think in general, I take a "gradualist" approach to learning new things. Paul Thomas Anderson (I believe paraphrasing another filmmaker) has likened screenwriting to ironing: "You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out." That's pretty much how I learn a given language and also how I take up new languages: venturing some ways into the unfamiliar, then circling back and consolidating, and then venturing out a little further than before. I imagine some folks here on the forum really enjoy learning a completely unfamiliar language without any bearings. I'd like to keep expanding and get there eventually, but I prefer to work my way up to it. Especially since I'm attempting to learn lots of languages concurrently, and it helps if they're related (genetically or through significant borrowing) and reinforce one another.

I think this basic preference has made the languages of MSEA feel like they're still a bit out of reach in two ways, and perhaps not challenging enough in a third way. They're a bit out of reach in that almost all of the vocabulary would be new to me, and the tones would probably take me a while. At the same time, I enjoy morphology, and with highly analytic languages, I kind of miss it.

None of this is set in stone, however. When I was a beginner in Spanish, the verbal morphology seemed like unnecessary work. Then after a while it became automatic and flowing, and it seemed incredibly beautiful. I imagine the only reason I've never felt that way about a tonal-analytic language is that I've never become fluent in one. Every language has its delights.

Also, these preferences only really apply when I'm picking out a new linguistic puzzle to have fun figuring out. When I'm in a situation where learning a language will help me communicate with people around me, that takes priority. But often, as with Vietnamese and Burmese, that situation doesn't last forever, and then the linguistic puzzle aspect becomes important again.

Actually, out of all the MSEA languages I've looked at, Burmese is probably the best fit for me at the moment.

With respect to vocabulary, it's as close to a bridge language as I'll find, since it borrowed extensively from Sanskrit and Pali, and it's genetically related, albeit somewhat distantly, to Chinese.

The phonemic inventory appeals to me. It includes several voiceless sonorants, which are fun, and two sounds that are hard to pin down. They're transcribed [θ] and [sʰ] in the Wikipedia entry, but as the first two phonetic notes explain, they're more particular than that. (The first sound is the key to pronouncing the Burmese word for "vegetarian," so I got a lot of practice with that one.)

I wouldn't say I mastered the tones or anything, but I didn't feel like they were holding me up. And there are some interactions between tone and other aspects of phonology that I find interesting. For example, the voiceless sonorants are quite subtle, and the Wikipedia entry says (in the third-to-last paragraph of the section on tones) that the distinction has largely passed from the consonant to the vowel, with the vowel following a voiceless sonorant being breathy or higher pitched. It could be a tone split in progress. I didn't know to listen for that when I was there and can't verify (and there's no citation on Wikipedia), but it's certainly interesting.

And while Burmese is largely analytic and most words are monosyllabic, I don't feel like I'm just putting one syllable after another, like laying bricks. There are minor syllables, and the two syllable-final consonants assimilate to the following consonant. One is a placeless nasal, and the other is a glottal stop before a pause, but if it comes before another consonant, then the consonant becomes geminate. (There are parallels to Japanese.)

And there's a certain amount of derivational morphology. For example, if you take an adjective-verb ("to be sweet," "to be spicy") and put an [ə] sound in front of it, you get the corresponding noun: "sweetness," "spiciness," or maybe "sweet thing," "spicy thing."

Finally, as long as I'm listing things I like, I'll throw in a cool bit of grammaticalization: the word meaning "to stay" or "to live, to dwell" is also a verb particle indicating that an action in progress.

All that, and I have friends living in Myanmar, and I found Burmese people really lovely.

I would definitely keep studying Burmese if I was living in Myanmar, and I'm pretty sure I would keep studying it outside Myanmar if there was an Assimil course. But it's challenging enough that I don't think I'd enjoy studying it outside Myanmar with the resources that are currently available (even though, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the Okell and Mesher courses seem quite good).

As for other tonal languages, now that I've gotten interested in tone as a linguistic phenomenon, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up having another go at a tonal language before too long.
7 x

lichtrausch
Blue Belt
Posts: 511
Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2015 3:21 pm
Languages: English (N), German, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean
x 1380

Re: jonm's occasional log: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese

Postby lichtrausch » Sun Dec 22, 2019 7:25 pm

jonm wrote:One way that dabbling in Burmese has helped me warm up to tonal languages is that it's inspired me to read about tonogenesis, and particularly tonogenesis in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area. I find it quite interesting (I've just posted about it here), and I think that's made me at least a little more motivated to study tonal languages in the future.

[...]

As for other tonal languages, now that I've gotten interested in tone as a linguistic phenomenon, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up having another go at a tonal language before too long.

Sounds like you've found your gateway into MSEA languages! I really need to learn more about phonology so I can better appreciate the mechanics.

I might have mentioned before that I share your natural aversion to tonal languages. Worse, with the exception of the Burmese alphabet, I also don't find the MSEA writing systems aesthetically appealing. Especially Vietnamese (diacritics were not intended to be used with reckless abandon!). After long years of on-and-off studying Mandarin, this year I finally got excited about the language after finding some media that I really enjoyed. It's just a talk show with some intelligent conversation, but it did the trick for me.

1 x

User avatar
jonm
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
x 667

Re: jonm's occasional log: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese

Postby jonm » Sun Jan 05, 2020 9:15 am

My languages at the start of 2020 are:

German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese

In this post I'll run through the intensive resources I'm using for each. (I'll save extensive materials for another time.)

Assimil is my primary intensive resource for every language except Latin, for which I'm using Lingua Latina per se illustrata.

I use sentences from Assimil and LLPSI to make Anki cards that I activate as I progress through the courses.

Assimil, bless them, provide a separate mp3 for each line of dialogue, with the text (but not the translation) in the tags. This makes it relatively easy to batch import an entire course into Anki. Getting LLPSI into Anki takes more time.

I make three kinds of Anki cards: listening, reading, and translation. The reading cards are only for languages that aren't written in the Latin alphabet. The translation cards come into play when I get to the second wave of an Assimil course.

Here's how the three kinds of cards work:

Listening:

  1. The front of the card plays the audio.
  2. I see if I can (a) understand it and (b) correctly type the sentence.
  3. The back of the card compares what I typed to the original sentence and plays the audio again.
  4. I practice pronouncing the sentence.

Reading:

  1. The front of the card shows the written sentence.
  2. I see if I can (a) understand it and (b) correctly pronounce it.
  3. The back of the card plays the audio.
  4. I practice pronouncing the sentence.

Translation:

  1. The front of the card shows the translation.
  2. I see if I can correctly type the original sentence, and as I type, I say the sentence out loud.
  3. The back of the card compares what I typed to the original sentence and plays the audio.
  4. I practice pronouncing the sentence.

Here are the intensive resources I'm using (or plan to use) and my progress in each as of January 1.

German

Assimil (With Ease 2014 / Perfectionnement)
: 82 / 100 : 0 / 70 Listening cards (first wave)
: 33 / 100 : 0 / 70 Translation cards (second wave)

This is the only Assimil course in which I've gotten to the second wave and started doing translation cards. I'm finding that the second wave is really important for locking in the language that I was exposed to in the first wave and making it productive. And for me, translation cards in Anki work better than translating each revisited lesson only once. There are bound to be sentences I don't translate correctly at first, and I want them to keep coming back until I get the hang of them.

This approach is really helping me remember the gender of nouns and the proper order of the different elements in a sentence.

Short-term goal: Finish the first wave of With Ease and start Perfectionnement.

Spanish

Assimil (Perfectionnement)
: 11 / 60 Listening cards (first wave)
: 0 / 60 Translation cards (second wave)

Modern Spanish Grammar: A Practical Guide, 2nd ed. (with workbook)
: 8 / 73 Chapters read & exercises

I look at Using Spanish as well as Perfectionnement, since both have good notes that call attention to different things. But when I get to the second wave, I plan to use Perfectionnement, because some of the translations in Using Spanish are a little awkward.

With the grammar book, I do the workbook exercises before reading the corresponding chapter. That way, I find out how well I know a particular area of grammar without brushing up on it first, and any mistakes or difficulties make the information in the chapter seem more pertinent.

French

Assimil (With Ease 1998 / Using French)
: 40 / 113 : 8 / 70 Listening cards (first wave)
: 0 / 113 : 0 / 70 Translation cards (second wave)

Le français par la Méthode Nature
: 21 / 50 Chapters read & exercises

When I got into Assimil, I was already low-intermediate in French, and I wasn't sure which course to do. I got eight lessons into Using French and found it appropriately challenging, but I decided I didn't want to miss With Ease. I think that was the right call. I've learned a good amount of new vocabulary, and while the grammar has almost all been familiar, I'm happy to reinforce it. And the dialogues are entertaining.

My productive skills in French lag behind my receptive skills, so I think it will be helpful to get to lesson 50 and start doing the second wave and the translation cards.

I'm also enjoying the Nature Method course. The narrative is a little anodyne, but I don't mind. I read everything out loud, both the chapters and the exercises.

Italian

Assimil (With Ease 1991 / Perfectionnement)
: 16 / 105 : 0 / 70 Listening cards (first wave)
: 0 / 105 : 0 / 70 Translation cards (second wave)

L'italiano secondo il Metodo Natura
: 7 / 50 Chapters read & exercises

The current edition of Assimil Italian doesn't sound so engaging, so I'm using the previous edition. Like El catalán sin esfuerzo (which I hope to get back to someday), it has an ongoing storyline that begins with someone arriving in a new city to stay with friends.

As with French, I'm reading the Nature Method course out loud, both the chapters and the exercises.

Italian is low priority at the moment, and when I do something in Italian it's usually reading or listening for pleasure, so I don't expect these progress bars will fill up quickly.

Latin

Lingua Latina per se illustrata
: 12 / 31 Listening cards (chapters 1–31)
: 16 / 56 Chapters read
: 3 / 56 Exercises

I make the listening cards from Ørberg's audio, which only goes through chapter 31 of Familia Romana.

I'm mainly basing my pronunciation on Allen's Vox Latina, which means I pronounce a couple things differently from Ørberg. For example, I don't pronounce word-final m as [m] or n before s or f as [n] but instead pronounce the preceding vowel as a long nasal vowel. I also pronounce t and d as dentals, whereas Ørberg pronounces them as alveolars.

These are small adjustments that are easy to make. Overall, I quite like Ørberg's pronunciation. His spoken Latin feels easy and "lived in," and his reading of his own work is warm and sprightly.

Ørberg also consistently distinguishes between long and short vowels when speaking and marks long vowels with macrons in the text. I would be interested in doing the Assimil course by Desessard, but I've sampled the different versions of the audio, and the speakers don't seem to pay attention to vowel length. And only the German-base book marks long vowels. Maybe I'll read it without audio when my German gets good enough.

Sanskrit

Assimil (Sans Peine)
: 17 / 100 Listening cards (first wave)
: 15 / 100 Reading cards (first wave)
: 0 / 100 Translation cards (second wave)

I said in my last post that I enjoy learning languages with complex morphology. Sanskrit is really putting that to the test, but so far confirming it. It helps that I can see parallels with Latin.

I like the Assimil course a lot so far. It's well paced, with good explanations. The voice actors have a lot of personality, and the dialogues conjure up vivid scenes of India.

Arabic

Assimil (With Ease 2015 / Perfectionnement)
: 16 / 77 : 0 / 70 Listening cards (first wave)
: 13 / 77 : 0 / 70 Reading cards (first wave)
: 0 / 77 : 0 / 70 Translation cards (second wave)

I've seen three criticisms of this course:

  • The audio is slow, exaggerated, and harsh.
  • The course starts out easy and ramps up slowly.
  • The course starts out teaching certain archaic features and later phases them out.

I basically agree with all three characterizations, but for me, the first is not a big deal, and the other two are good things.

I generally like that Assimil audio starts out slow and clear, but I agree that the audio for this course overshoots the mark. It doesn't really bother me though. I do have another complaint, which is that there have been a few short exchanges that are grammatically between a man and a woman, but the male actor does both parts.

I appreciate the gradual learning curve, since just about every aspect of Arabic is new to me: the script, the grammar, the vocabulary, and quite a few sounds. There's a lot to take in, and I'd rather go slowly and get lots of practice.

And I like following language change "downstream," so learning archaic features only to phase them out later works for me too.

Short-term goal: Get to lesson 28, at which point I'll have been introduced to all the letters and sounds.

Japanese

Assimil (With Ease)
: 16 / 98 Listening cards (first wave)
: 14 / 98 Reading cards (first wave)
: 0 / 98 Translation cards (second wave)

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course
: 528 / 2300 Recognition cards

I'm using the two-volume English-base Assimil course. The latest French-base course combines the two volumes, adds review dialogues, and tweaks a couple of the other dialogues, but it seems that the new audio was generated using text-to-speech and sounds unnatural in places (see messages 67–70 here).

An example of how the preferences guiding my choice of languages are not set in stone: I've had some interest in learning Japanese for years, but I held off, in large part because I didn't want to memorize over two thousand kanji. Now kanji practice has become a highlight of my language routine.

Kanji no Satori by Steve Thenell is a good introduction that helped me understand and appreciate how kanji work.

And then my main resource is The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course by Andrew Scott Conning. Although it only came out in 2013, it seems to have fallen out of print, and it's going for crazy prices, but I kept an eye out and eventually snagged a reasonably priced used copy.

I looked at a few books that teach kanji or hanzi, and I feel that this one offers the best mnemonics: vivid, often etymologically grounded, creative where etymology would be less helpful.

Here's what I do when "meeting" a new character:

  1. I look at the character and its basic meaning(s).
  2. I read the notes and have another look at the character in light of the suggested mnemonic.
  3. I look at the sample vocabulary. Sample compounds only include characters that have already been introduced. If there any I don't remember, I flip back and review them.

Image

Each page introduces four characters, and I do a page or two or three at a time and then activate the corresponding Anki cards. The cards couldn't be simpler:

  1. The front of the card shows the character.
  2. I see if I can remember at least one of the basic meanings, which are revealed on the back of the card.

When I meet a character in the Kanji Learner's Course or review it in Anki, I don't try to memorize its readings. I learn the readings in context as the character comes up in Assimil. Or if I first meet a character in Assimil, I get the readings and context up front, and later I'll encounter the character in KLC and get a story relating its form to its meanings. Either way, Assimil and KLC complement each other, one resource creating a partial, provisional entry in my mental lexicon, the other rounding it out and reinforcing it.
7 x

User avatar
jonm
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
x 667

Re: jonm's occasional log: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese

Postby jonm » Mon Jan 06, 2020 3:05 am

lichtrausch wrote:Sounds like you've found your gateway into MSEA languages! I really need to learn more about phonology so I can better appreciate the mechanics.

I might have mentioned before that I share your natural aversion to tonal languages. Worse, with the exception of the Burmese alphabet, I also don't find the MSEA writing systems aesthetically appealing. Especially Vietnamese (diacritics were not intended to be used with reckless abandon!). After long years of on-and-off studying Mandarin, this year I finally got excited about the language after finding some media that I really enjoyed. It's just a talk show with some intelligent conversation, but it did the trick for me.


Sorry once again for the slow reply. Happy to hear you've found your enthusiasm for Mandarin! Interesting media can make such a difference, and that show does seem interesting. I actually listened to half the episode, enjoying the sound of the discourse without understanding a word. After that, I managed to resist sampling Assimil Chinese for a few days, but then I caved and gave it a whirl. Fortunately for my already crowded language lineup, it wasn't long before I felt daunted by the tones and returned Mandarin to my long list of "hopefully someday" languages. Would you say you've gotten the hang of the tones? How did you approach them?

I also find it hard to get into a language if I don't find the writing system aesthetically appealing. Actually, that was an issue with Burmese. There are so many characters composed of parts of circles! When I was in Myanmar, I was always on the lookout for a typeface that I really liked. The friend I stayed with is a designer who pays attention to such things, and we would point to signs and say, "What do you think of that one?" There was a film festival going on in Yangon while I was there, and I went to a screening in the park, and my attention was divided between the film and the typeface used for the subtitles, since it was one of the few I really liked. Also, there were used bookstores with old comic books, and some of the hand lettering was really beautiful (I wish now that I'd taken pictures or brought some home). But I felt like I had to hunt for specific styles that I liked, whereas with some writing systems, I'm fond of the underlying system. Someday I'd like to learn Bangla, in part because I like the writing. Reminiscent of Devanagri (which I also like) and other Brahmic scripts, but with some extra verve...

Image
2 x

lichtrausch
Blue Belt
Posts: 511
Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2015 3:21 pm
Languages: English (N), German, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean
x 1380

Re: jonm's occasional log: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese

Postby lichtrausch » Mon Jan 06, 2020 10:36 pm

jonm wrote:Would you say you've gotten the hang of the tones? How did you approach them?

When a Chinese interlocutor doesn't understand me, it's almost always due to my grammar or word choice rather than my tones, so I think I approximate them decently. I still can't reliably pick out tones from normally spoken Chinese though.

Aside from just imitating what I hear, I looked at a tone chart for Mandarin and learned the sandhi rules. I've received some helpful corrections from native speakers, for example that I wasn't holding the note on the first tone for long enough. Recently I've played around with my pronunciation of Chinese, without being held hostage to pinyin. I have no evidence to back up this, but to my ear syllables can take on a subtly different quality depending on what tone is modifying the syllable, if that makes sense. But tonal languages have taught me that I have a bad ear for pitch, so take that with a grain of salt.

But I felt like I had to hunt for specific styles that I liked, whereas with some writing systems, I'm fond of the underlying system.

That sounds exactly like my experience with the Thai script. For example I like the font of the headline in the article below, but the font of the main text (which seems to be something like the standard font for Thai) leaves me cold.

https://www.thairath.co.th/news/foreign/1741193
1 x

User avatar
jonm
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
x 667

Re: jonm's occasional log

Postby jonm » Sun Mar 15, 2020 1:19 pm

lichtrausch wrote:When a Chinese interlocutor doesn't understand me, it's almost always due to my grammar or word choice rather than my tones, so I think I approximate them decently. I still can't reliably pick out tones from normally spoken Chinese though.

Aside from just imitating what I hear, I looked at a tone chart for Mandarin and learned the sandhi rules. I've received some helpful corrections from native speakers, for example that I wasn't holding the note on the first tone for long enough. Recently I've played around with my pronunciation of Chinese, without being held hostage to pinyin. I have no evidence to back up this, but to my ear syllables can take on a subtly different quality depending on what tone is modifying the syllable, if that makes sense. But tonal languages have taught me that I have a bad ear for pitch, so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm really setting a record for slow replies here. Sorry about that. I unexpectedly started working on something that meant taking a break from the forum. More on that in a moment, but just want to say that I think you're right about tone interacting with other aspects of the syllable. I know in Burmese, for example, what's called a checked tone makes the vowel more lax, so /i/ comes out as [ɪ], /e/ comes out as [ɛ], etc. Hope I'm remembering that right. I don't know much about Mandarin, but it seems very plausible that the different tones could be characterized by more than just a particular pitch contour: vowel quality, voice quality, etc.

Also, it gives me hope for my own language learning that you didn't initially take to tones but have gotten the hang of them.

As for what I've been working on that's meant less time on the forum and also less time for language learning, it's my master's thesis, which had been in mothballs for about five years. I had finished all my classes, and I had come up with a pretty cool fieldwork adventure: I went to Ladakh, in the far north of India up in the Himalayas, where they speak a form of Tibetan that retains complex initial consonant clusters that gradually get simpler if you go west to east. I bicycled around recording people saying certain words, and the idea was to investigate that variation within the dialect continuum.

The adventure part was pretty great—the mountains look like those rover pictures of Mars, and in between settlements you have it all pretty much to yourself, and then the towns and villages are little pockets of green where there's enough water to grow things. And people are incredibly warm and hospitable.

And the fieldwork went well too. Then I got back and had tons of work to do cutting up the audio and trying to make sense of it. And at some point I set it all aside and got involved in other things and thought I might never circle back to it. But recently I was inspired to actually finish, and that's what I've been working on.

As I say, it's meant a lot less time for the languages I'm studying just for pleasure, but here's what I've been able to do...

Spanish

Listening to the Marvel Studios Noticias podcast.

French

Assimil (With Ease 1998 / Using French)
: 53 / 113 : 8 / 70 Listening cards (first wave)
: 4 / 113 : 0 / 70 Translation cards (second wave)

One of my goals at the start of the year was to get into the second wave in Assimil and start doing translation cards in Anki, and I've done that, though further progress will be slow.

I'm reading a book called Le prisme des langues by Nicolas Tournadre, a linguist who specializes in Tibetan, so it's tangentially related to the thesis.

And I'm really enjoying a language learning podcast called Impolyglot.

Modern Greek

Assimil (Sans Peine 2017)
: 14 / 99 Listening cards (first wave)
: 10 / 99 Reading cards (first wave)
: 0 / 99 Translation cards (second wave)

Language Transfer
: 30 / 120

A recent addition to the language lineup. Assimil and Language Transfer make a great combination.

Also reading this interlinear short story collection. Here's the "about the author":

Roubina Gouyoumtzian is a Modern Greek author who is inspired by Michael Ende, Jostein Gaarder and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In her writings, she uses symbolism and explores the concept of time, humanity, as well as death and its acceptance during or at the end of one's life. Roubina's stories allow the reader to walk on the fine line between surrealism and metaphysical projections of the human mind.

I'm only two stories in, but I'm enjoying it so far, and I'm excited to find a beginner reader that deals with themes like that. There's also a second collection by the same author.

Sanskrit

I like the Assimil course, but I'm kind of stalled in the third week, so I've started reading Walter Maurer's The Sanskrit Language. To summarize what I wrote about it over in Sahmilat's log, I like that the author's personality and opinions come through in the explanations, and each chapter has a passage of connected, accessible Sanskrit that he's written or adapted. I'm only through the second of those, and it took me a while to read, but it was very satisfying. I'm skipping the parts where I would translate English sentences into Sanskrit though.

Japanese

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course
: 584 / 2300 Recognition cards

I review kanji in Anki most days and occasionally learn new ones, but further progress will be slow. Assimil is on hold.

Others

Nothing new in the other languages. For some of them, I've been able to keep up with Anki reviews, and for others, I only review now and then, and the cards are really piling up. It's OK though, that was pretty much what happened when I was in Myanmar, and it only took a week or so to dig my way out when I got back. I expect I can do the same if and when I finish the thesis.
3 x

User avatar
jonm
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
x 667

Re: jonm's occasional log: Romance family Super Challenge

Postby jonm » Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:51 pm

With everything that's going on, my language hobby seems unimportant, and I feel strange giving it a detailed write-up. I have been doing a lot of language stuff though, kind of retreating into it for better or worse. So here goes.

I'm doing a Romance family Super Challenge that includes (roughly from west to east in Europe): Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, and Latin (not technically Romance, I know).

My Spanish is advanced and my French intermediate (still). The other four were beginner languages when I started the challenge, and now I'd put my Portuguese at low intermediate (thanks to a combination of the challenge, Assimil with Anki, some previous exposure, and its similarity to Spanish).

I'm up to 1520 pages (30.4 "books") and 2714 minutes (30.1 "films"). If I kept up this pace for another seven months, I would finish the Super Challenge in half the time, and I could double it or start partial challenges in one or more of my non-Romance languages. But things could easily change such that I'd have less time to spend on this, so for now I'm just thinking of it as a single challenge where I've got a cushion.

Here are two graphs of the first three months, first pages, then minutes:

pages 20-07-31.png
minutes 20-07-31.png

And here are breakdowns of what I've been reading, watching, and listening to in each language.

(Unless otherwise specified, I watched films or TV with English subtitles, and I started and finished an item within these three months. "x2" means two times through, usually in close succession, whereas "reread" or "rewatch" means a single time through something I knew from before.)

I've commented here and there, and I'd be happy to say more about anything, just let me know.

I'm also doing Assimil (LLPSI for Latin) together with Anki for these and other languages, but I'll save that for another post.

Portuguese

Books
Machado de Assis - O alienista (interlinear)
Clarice Lispector - O mistério do coelho pensante e outros contos
Clarice Lispector - Crônicas para jovens: De bichos e pessoas
Clarice Lispector - Crônicas para jovens: De escrita e vida
Milton Hatoum - Dois irmãos
Clarice Lispector - Crônicas para jovens: Do Rio de Janeiro e seus personagens (in progress)

I only discovered Clarice Lispector thanks to the Super Challenge, and now she's one of the writers I'm most interested in. I started with her children's stories, and I'm on the third of four collections of her newspaper columns. There are many columns I'd like to reread (one standout that's online is "As três experiências"), and I'm excited to get to her short stories and novels.

I also enjoyed Milton Hatoum's novel Dois irmãos, about a Lebanese family in Manaus and the feud between the titular two brothers. It was somewhat above my level, and reading sessions felt like good, strenuous mental workouts. I could follow the plot, but I'm sure I missed lots of nuances. I'm planning to read the graphic novel adaptation, which should help fill in any gaps, and I'd like to read the novel again at some point.

Films
Kleber Mendonça Filho - Aquarius (2016)
Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles - Bacurau (2019)
Roberto Farias - Assalto ao trem pagador (1962)

I recommend Aquarius. Great performance by Sônia Braga as a woman resisting being forced out of the seaside apartment where she's lived for decades.

Videos
Interview with Clarice Lispector (x2)
O ovo, Clarice e a galinha

Podcasts
Fala Gringo (3 episodes)
Aprender de ouvido: Fábulas africanas (1 episode x2, second time with transcript)

Fala Gringo reminds me a little of Inner French. The podcaster, Leni, is warm and personable, and he discusses interesting topics.

Spanish

Books
Angélica Gorodischer - Kalpa Imperial (in progress)
Soledad Puértolas - Compañeras de viaje (in progress)

Comics
Chris Claremont, et al. - The Uncanny X-Men (12 issues, reread)

Films
Fabián Bielinsky - Nueve reinas (2000) (rewatch, no subs)

A couple of con artists in Buenos Aires over twenty-four hours. I point to it as a rare example of a twisty film whose twists hold up on rewatch. (One of my favorite critics says pretty much the opposite in this capsule review but likes the film a lot anyway.)

TV
Cuéntame Cómo Pasó (3 episodes, no subs)

Podcasts
Notes in Spanish Advanced (7 episodes)
Marvel Studios Noticias (2 episodes)

Catalan

Books
Anna Maria Villalonga - Contes per a les nits de lluna plena (in progress, each story x2)

Entertaining tales of the macabre. The ones in the second half are lighter and kind of spoof the genre. Not specifically aimed at language learners, but makes for good A2/B1 reading. Naturally, the vocabulary skews toward the spooky and witchy.

TV
Merlí (12 episodes, Catalan subs, finished)
Merlí: Sapere aude (1 episode, no subs)

Some aspects of Merlí impress me and others make me roll my eyes, and it averages out to pretty good. I did end up caring about the characters, and I thought the series finale did right by them and stuck the landing. Not sure whether to continue watching the spinoff.

French

Books
Nicolas Tournadre - Le prisme des langues (finished)
Stéphane Beauverger - Le Déchronologue (in progress)
Jean-Louis Fournier - Mon autopsie (in progress)
Raymond Queneau - Exercices de style (in progress)

Le prisme des langues is an interesting survey of the world's linguistic diversity. Written for a general audience by a linguist who specializes in Tibetan languages. He often draws examples from his area of expertise, but he discusses many other languages too. Full of interesting facts. For example, he says that there are only four writing systems in wide use today whose modern form (or something very close to it) is more than two thousand years old. Care to guess which ones? I'll put the answer at the end of the post.

Films
Safy Nebbou - Celle que vous croyez (2019)
Jean-Pierre Melville - Le doulos (1962)
Céline Sciamma - Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019)

Celle que vous croyez is about a woman who creates a younger online persona and through it gets involved with a younger man. Juliette Binoche gives a great performance, as always.

Le doulos is like other Melville noirs I've seen in that it's ultracool and stylish, but I don't really feel anything for the characters.

Portrait de la jeune fille en feu is just achingly beautiful.

Podcasts
Inner French (1 episode)
Impolyglot (6 episodes)

Impolyglot is faster than Inner French (which I heartily recommend at A2/B1) but still easier to understand than many native podcasts, so it's a good next step. The podcaster shares substantive thoughts on language learning.

Italian

Books
Sonia Ognibene - La prossima vittima (reread)
Sonia Ognibene - Non puoi essere tu (reread)
Luca Novelli - I fratelli Lumière e la straordinaria invenzione del cinema
Luca Novelli - Magellano e l'Oceano che non c'era
Luca Novelli - Hawking e il mistero dei buchi neri (in progress)
Arthur M. Jensen - L'italiano secondo il Metodo Natura (in progress)

I recommend Sonia Ognibene's three A2/B1 thrillers (these two and Sarai mio, which I'll also likely reread for the challenge). The protagonists feel real, and the stories are genuinely suspenseful and move you right along. And the language-learning features work really well. There are in-line glosses for the more advanced vocabulary, so no need to flip to and from a separate glossary, and the glosses are still in Italian, just simpler Italian. And following each chapter of first-person narrative, there's a short recap in the third person. So you can see the same events put into words two different ways, which I find very beneficial, and you can be sure not to miss any plot elements.

Lingua's log is where I found out about Luca Novelli's Lampi di genio series. These are books for young readers that recount the lives of scientific luminaries in the first person. I like that they cover not only their subjects' major accomplishments but also their milieux and curious details of their lives. A few examples from Stephen Hawking's early life: The family car was a converted London taxicab, and they would vacation in a vardo, a Romani wagon. After Hawking graduated from Oxford (and before he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease), he and a friend traveled by train and bus to Iran and were there during a devastating earthquake. This bit isn't in the book, but he later said: "I must have been near the epicenter, but I was unaware of it because I was ill and in a bus that was bouncing around on the uneven Iranian roads." Plenty more titles in the series...

Films
Ermanno Olmi - Il posto (1961) (rewatch)

Lovely film about a young man entering the workforce. Really captures the feel of that transition.

TV
Spectacular Spider-Man (13 episodes, no subs)

Podcasts
Alle otto della sera: Annibale (2 episodes)

Latin

Books
Hans H. Ørberg - Familia Romana (in progress)
Hans H. Ørberg - Colloquia personarum (in progress)
Hans H. Ørberg - Fabellae Latinae (in progress)
Daniel Pettersson & Amelie Rosengren - Pugio Bruti (in progress)
Caroli Francisci Lhomond - Epitome Historiae Sacrae (in progress)

Podcasts
Satura Lanx: Litterae Latinae Simplices (1 episode x2)



So that's where things stand with the Romance family Super Challenge. I'll talk about other languages, and other resources I'm using for these languages, in another post.

And here's the answer to the question tucked away in the section on French books: According to Nicolas Tournadre, the four writing systems in wide use today whose modern form (or something very close to it) is more than two thousand years old are Greek, Chinese, Hebrew (square script), and Latin.

Nicolas Tournadre in Le prisme des langues, ch. II.5 wrote:Comme le montre la liste ci-dessous, seules quatre écritures actuelles ont plus de deux mille ans d’ancienneté.
[...]
Voici une liste des principaux systèmes d’écriture en vigueur actuellement : grec (IVe s. avant J.-C.), chinois (IIIe s. avant J.-C.), hébreu carré (IIIe s. avant J.-C.), latin (Ier s. avant J.-C.), guèze (Ve s.), arménien (Ve s.), géorgien (Ve s.), arabe (VIe s.), tibétain (VIIIe s.), tamoul (VIIIe s.), japonais (IXe s.), cyrillique (IXe s.), kannada (IXe s.), télougou (IXe s.), khmer (IXe s.), singhalais (IXe s.), malayālam. (Xe s.), bengali (et assamais, XIe s.), birman (XIe s.), devanāgarī (XIe s.) oriyā (XIIe s.), thaï (XIIIe s.), mongol (XIIIe s.), laotien (XIVe s.), buhid (XIVe s.), coréen han’gŭl (XVe s.), gurmukhī (ou panjabi, XVIe s.), gujrātī (XVIe s.), thaana (ou divehi, XVIe s.), limbu (XVIIIe s.), lepcha (XVIIIe s.), ojibwa (XIXe s.) [et ses dérivés blackfoot (XIXe s.), cree (XIXe s.), inuktitut (XIXe s.)], cherokee (XIXe s.), vai (XIXe s.), n’ko (XXe s.), sorang sompeng (XXe s.), varang kshiti (XXe s.), yi (XXe s.), ol cemet’ (XXe s.), pahawh hmong (XXe s.) et braille (XIXe s.).

La liste ci-dessus n’inclut pas les langues écrites parfois anciennes dont l’usage actuel est souvent restreint à un domaine liturgique, symbolique ou ornemental [...].
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
9 x

User avatar
jonm
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
x 667

Re: jonm's occasional log: Romance family Super Challenge

Postby jonm » Tue Sep 01, 2020 3:26 pm

It's the end of another month doing the Romance family Super Challenge. Informally, I'm still trying to stay ahead of the pace for a double challenge, leaving myself the option of either doubling up or adding other languages. I cleared my targets of 2000 pages and 3600 minutes (40 "books" and "films"). I'm up to 2464 pages (49.2 "books") and 3994 minutes (44.3 "films").

I don't really plan which languages to prioritize, and that probably has its downsides, but the upside is that I'm usually pretty eager to work on whatever language I'm working on. Early in the challenge, Portuguese got the most attention, and lately it's been Italian, as you can see below...

pages 2020-31-08.png
minutes 2020-31-08.png

Here are breakdowns and comments...

(Same note as last time: Unless otherwise specified, I watched films or TV with English subtitles, and I started and finished an item within this month. "x2" means two times through, usually in close succession, whereas "reread" or "rewatch" means a single time through something I knew from before.)

Portuguese

Books
Clarice Lispector - Crônicas para jovens: Do Rio de Janeiro e seus personagens (finished)
Clarice Lispector - Todas as crônicas (in progress)
Clarice Lispector - A hora da estrela (in progress)

I finished the third of four themed collections of Clarice Lispector's newspaper columns, and I enjoyed them so much that when I couldn't find the remaining title as an ebook, I started reading a collection of every column she ever wrote. It'll take me a while, but I'm happy not to miss any of them.

And then A hora da estrela is the first of her works of fiction that I've tried. I'm a quarter of the way through, and to my surprise, it's not really speaking to me the way the columns do. I'll probably keep going though.

Podcasts
Escriba Cafe - 1 episode
Fala Gringo - 1 episode

Spanish

Books
Soledad Puértolas - Compañeras de viaje (in progress)

TV
Cuéntame Cómo Pasó - 1 episode (no subs)

Podcasts
Notes in Spanish Advanced - 3 episodes
Marvel Studios Noticias - 1 episode
Negra y Criminal - "Vértigo" (relisten)

I've listened to two episodes of Negra y Criminal that adapt films I know: Vertigo and Cape Fear. Both use the music from the films, and they have vivid sound design and good voice acting. And they do something interesting that adds a unique dimension to the adaptation: Mona León Siminiani, who writes and directs the adaptations and collaborates on the sound design, also speaks, and often she's the voice in the protagonist's head, commenting or spurring them on, but she can jump around omnisciently and be the inner voice for other characters as well. (And at one point in the adaptation of Vertigo, she takes over the outer voice, speaking the protagonist's actual dialogue.) It really opens up the story and gives it an unpredictable energy.

Here's Mona León Siminiani answering an interview question about this in Spanish:

¿Cómo definiría esa voz que ha creado para sus trabajos, la voz de la conciencia?

A mí me gusta llamarla la voz interna. Por voz de la conciencia solemos entender algo con un tinte más moral, y Mona no tiene moral, digamos. Puede ir con el asesino o con la víctima, y es muy raro que tome posiciones morales. En realidad es eso: la voz interna que todos llevamos dentro, que nos advierte, nos hace bromas, dice lo que no nos atrevemos a decir socialmente, nos echa puros de vez en cuando y sobre todo nos dice las verdades que ni nosotros mismos queremos saber. Además, técnicamente cumple otra función, la de “hacer de cámara”. Muchas veces Mona hace apreciaciones de espacio, algo fundamental para crear realidad en sonido, o advierte de cosas que vienen, une puntos o llega a conclusiones que en cine por ejemplo se hacen mediante la imagen pura. Ella es un arma en este sentido. Este era también un modo de hacerme presente en el programa sin ser una presentadora al uso, como te comentaba antes. Lo que no sabía es que se iba a convertir en un sello “tan sello”, por decirlo de algún modo. Mona no es un personaje que pretenda decirle al oyente lo que debería pensar, más bien muchas veces dice lo que está pensando, y con eso también es una narradora de la propia imaginación del oyente. Un lío, vaya.

Catalan

Books
Anna Maria Villalonga - Contes per a les nits de lluna plena (finished, each story x2)
Silvia Broome, et al. - Paper cremat: 10 contes per a 100 anys de Ray Bradbury (in progress)
Joan Anton Català Amigó - 100 qüestions sobre l'univers: Del Big Bang a la cerca de la vida (in progress)

100 qüestions sobre l'univers makes great Super Challenge reading. The chapters are a few pages each, making it easy to dip in and out, and they offer clear, engaging explanations of cosmic phenomena that often leave me feeling quietly awed.

French

Books
Stéphane Beauverger - Le Déchronologue (in progress)
Jean-Louis Fournier - Mon autopsie (in progress)
Raymond Queneau - Exercices de style (in progress)

Films
Jules Dassin - Du rififi chez les hommes (1955) (rewatch)
Alain Resnais - Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

The first and third acts of Du rififi chez les hommes are standard noir, but in between is probably my favorite heist on film, I think because it's so plausible and unspectacular. There are no acrobatics or devices that only exist in movies. You just watch as the thieves meticulously carry out the job, and it feels like you're right there with them.

I'm not sure how Hiroshima mon amour works as well as it does. One of the two leads, Eiji Okada, had to learn and deliver his lines without being fluent in French. And every moment involving either or both of the two leads feels planned: every line, every laugh, every movement of the actors or the camera. The only spontaneity is in the documentary-style footage of city life in Hiroshima. And yet the film is really captivating.

Podcasts
Inner French - 1 episode

Italian

Books
Luca Novelli - Hawking e il mistero dei buchi neri (finished)
Sonia Ognibene - Sarai mio (reread)
Jhumpa Lahiri - In altre parole
Luca Novelli - Mendel e l'invasione degli OGM
Andrea Contato - Through the Moongate, parte I (reread)
Elena Ferrante - L'amica geniale (in progress, each chapter x2)
Luca Novelli - Galileo e la prima guerra stellare (in progress)
Arthur M. Jensen - L'italiano secondo il Metodo Natura (in progress)

Jhumpa Lahiri is an American writer who has three main languages (though I gather she's studied others as well): English is her first language, Bengali is the heritage language she speaks with her parents, and Italian is the language she fell in love with and chose for herself. She wrote In altre parole in Italian, and it's about her experience learning Italian and what the language means to her, and also about how her three languages and corresponding identities interrelate.

Toward the beginning of the book, I felt like she was using a lot of metaphors that were serviceable but not particularly striking or original (learning a language is like swimming across a lake). But the book grew on me. I found her metaphorical description of Venice more evocative: her English is the water, the dominant natural element, and her Italian is the city, an elaborate construction of bridges and walkways that she can get around in, but that also seems insubstantial and dreamlike, seen through a fog or reflected in the water. Elsewhere, she talks about what it was like to write her first short story in Italian, and then in the next chapter, you get that story. And I could definitely relate to the dual experience of yearning for a foreign language and culture: it's liberating, because to some extent you can choose to be someone else in the world, but it's also frustrating and disillusioning, because as hard as you try, you never fully get inside.

I enjoyed reading what garyb and Lingua thought of the book.

And then Through the Moongate is about the Ultima series of computer role-playing games, which I was a fan of growing up. It's always nice when I can indulge a niche interest and consider it language practice (as when I listen to a Spanish podcast about superhero movies). I backed the Kickstarter for part two of this book, and I'm eager for it to come out, hopefully later this year.

Articles
Il Post - 1 article

Comics
Tiziano Sclavi, et al. - Dylan Dog - 3 issues (1 reread)

Dylan Dog is a fumetto about a private investigator specializing in the supernatural. It's fun and at the same time genuinely eerie and unsettling. I ordered some nice reprint editions of early issues from the '80s. The issues were originally black and white, and ordinarily I'd probably want to read them the way they were first published, but the coloring on these reprints is really well done, with fairly muted colors and old-school Ben Day dots. There are a couple sample images of the issue I just finished here.

Films
Michelangelo Antonioni - La notte (1961)

This is the third film I've seen by Antonioni. With this one and L'avventura, I felt something like: "I'm definitely watching a masterpiece, and I'm happy to be, but I'm also conscious of the time and counting down to when it's over." Like I'd rather have seen the film than be seeing it. With The Passenger, on the other hand, I'm aware of some flaws, but it's also a favorite that I can just get lost in. That could be because The Passenger is in English and stars a very familiar actor, Jack Nicholson. Or maybe because I go for stories about assuming other identities. Or because Nicholson plays an American assuming another identity in Spain, which is a situation that especially resonates with me, even though in my case I didn't actually doctor a passport or anything (no spoilers here, that happens at the very beginning of the film). The Talented Mr. Ripley is another favorite that appeals to me for similar reasons. Anyway, just interesting how different it is to really enter into a film and to appreciate it from a distance, and how the viewer's life experiences might tilt it one way or the other. I've also watched the first half of my fourth Antonioni, L'eclisse, so maybe I'll revisit this in the next update.

Videos
Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri
Learn Italian with Lucrezia - Dialects vs. accents (no subs)

Podcasts
Podcast Italiano - 11 episodes
Pensieri e Parole - 4 episodes
Risciò - 2 episodes
Da Costa a Costa - 2 episodes
Domani - 1 episode

Podcast Italiano has become a regular listen. Not sure yet if that will happen with any of the others, but they're all interesting and well done. Pensieri e Parole is for learners, and it's mainly about literature and culture. The other three are for native speakers, but they're not super fast. Risciò and Da Costa a Costa are about the internal politics and geopolitics of China and the US, respectively. Domani is a new podcast speculating about life after the coronavirus.

Latin

Books
Daniel Pettersson & Amelie Rosengren - Pugio Bruti (in progress)

Podcasts
Satura Lanx: Litterae Latinae Simplices - 2 episodes (x2)
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Last edited by jonm on Tue Jan 05, 2021 8:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
10 x

User avatar
lingua
Blue Belt
Posts: 951
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2016 11:23 pm
Languages: English (N)
Maintaining: italiano (B2/C1ish)
Studying: português, Latina
Dabbling: siciliano, Deutsch, français, piemontèis
Abandoned: ไทย, español
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12257
x 2024

Re: jonm's occasional log: Romance family Super Challenge

Postby lingua » Wed Sep 02, 2020 3:31 am

How do you like Pugio Bruti? I am on their email list and thought about buying it.
1 x
Super Challenge 2022-23:
DE: books: 0 / 2500 film: 1654 / 4500
IT: books: 3065 / 5000 film: 5031 / 9000
PT: books: 2921 / 5000 film: 5010 / 9000

Output Challenge 2023:
IT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 84 / 3000
PT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 0 / 3000

PT: Read 100 books: 28 / 100

addylad
White Belt
Posts: 28
Joined: Mon Jan 01, 2018 5:55 pm
Languages: English (N), French (B1?)
x 40

Re: jonm's occasional log: Romance family Super Challenge

Postby addylad » Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:26 pm

I'm impressed with your maintenance of so many romance languages. How much do you find you lean on your Italian for French, Portuguese for Spanish, etc.? Or do you find them more of a nuisance?
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: MorkTheFiddle and 2 guests