A Very Dead Language Log (Abandoned--Admin, feel free to delete))

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Tue Jan 15, 2019 1:50 am

My copy of Cawl: A Straeon Eraill finally came. The publisher lists it as B2 level but the stories seem easy enough for me. So I will plan read one of the stories for this week's Short Story challenge story. Granted, buying new books is so rare for me these days that I get excited over just holding a new book in my hands (come at me, Marie Kondo*, I dare you!) but the book looks really nice--the stories aren't too long, the print is a good, readable size and it has both a glossary in the back and mini-word lists on each page at the bottom of words learners may not be familiar with. I flipped the book open, looked at the first word list I saw and immediately found my new favorite Welsh word: drysu -- to be confused. Seems like a very appropriate word for a Welsh learner. :lol:

(* you know, I just had to get in a Marie Kondo joke before it gets too passé ;) Plus I love how my nervous, manic imagination comes up with a picture of Marie Kondo chasing me around my house while I frantically grab every book in sight, screaming, "But they all give me joooooooy!" I might be a little frazzled from having to deal with work AND family AND plumbers today... )

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 13 / 365

  • Day 14 -- French: after doing my daily goal on both my vocab and conjugation courses on Memrise, I did 15 minutes of pronunciation practice with the Pronounce It Perfectly In French audio and then I read this brief article on how a court in Rennes botched a Breton placename (seems like a minor faux pas, but a court in Rennes should know better than to get Breton speakers all in a fuss) and then this article on Saturn losing its rings (which is on the third site I had to go to to read an article on this in French because the first 2 news sites I looked at demanded I pay a subscription to read their article :roll:).

The dev for Stardew Valley has promised the beta release of the French translation soon, so I am looking forward to that. In the meantime, I am still playing Hero of the Kingdom and started a new Skyrim playthrough in French as well. I am struggling a little with the French voice acting in Skyrim because, I swear, even though I recognize a couple of the voices from the French audio for Fallout 4, Bethesda Studios must have gotten all Quebecois/Montreal voice actors for this game, and some of them are very hard for me to understand, especially the male voices that try to sound gruff or eccentric (the guy voicing Heimskir, the street preacher, is absolutely unintelligible to me). I went onto You Tube and listened to some Quebecois speakers speaking normally and I didn't find them as difficult to follow so I think it's just these voice actors "acting." I will just have to pay extra attention to the subtitles until it gets easier, although I had no difficulty understanding my follower Marcurio screaming, "Par les dieux, NON!" when I accidentally set him on fire in the Lumidor (Goldenglow) tunnel fire trap. :lol:
4 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Wed Jan 16, 2019 4:53 pm

The Indonesian book I got for the Short Story Challenge came and it's not what I had though it would be. It's more a traditional novel than I had thought so it won't work. Oh well. I have enough stories in four of my languages now to keep me busy for several weeks while I'll keep looking for stories in Indonesian that I can use. i will use this book for my general Indonesian studies instead, which is nice. as I haven't really read any long fiction in Indonesian yet.

I signed up with the LLF Book Club for the next book they picked out--Metro 2033. I have not played the video game, and I only have very vague knowledge of the series. I'll be reading it in German, so that will be largely my main activity for my Big Fat German Review while I am doing that. I already read a few pages, and I think it's doable for me. The German e-book was on sale on Amazon.com and I got the e-book+audiobook for $8. Yay, bargains!

I did some Duolingo today, after taking about a week off (kept my streak though, via streak freezes). You can stop sending me emails about how much you miss me now, Duolingo. :roll: Seriously Duolingo, along with Kwiziq, are the worst about email spam. Anyhow, I made the executive decision to not delete any more of my Duolingo trees until I am in better health. There's one thing you learn fast from being chronically ill and that's you don't make good choices when you're feeling your worst and it just doesn't feel like this is a good time to go deleting years of work and time.

I'm doing various things for my SCs, Short Story Challenge, Q1 2019 Grammar-palooza and general stiudy, in small portions, but I will write about all that later when I have more to write about and more energy to write with. For now I mainly want to update my 365 Challenge because I am afraid I will forget what I did on such and such day if I go too long, as I'm resisting making duplicate records to track my progress and relying only on this log to record it.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 16 / 365

  • Day 15 -- Irish: Reviewed Unit 3: Focus Sentence in Intermediate Irish and watched 1 epsode of Ros na Rún--I haven't watched this enough to really know these characters and the storylines, but most of dialogue is pretty easy to understand.

  • Day 16 -- Irish: Reviewed 5 units that had decayed in skill strength (per Duome.eu) on the Duolingo Irish tree and watched 2 more episodes of Ros na Rún
3 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:31 am

I had trouble sleeping last night, so during my awake periods I read articles in the Culture section of Huffingtonpost.fr. When I eventually got more than an hour's sleep, I had another silly dream in French. In this dream, someone was trying to persuade me that Falstaff died offstage from syphilis but I just kept saying « Mais rien n'indique cela dans le texte anglais original ! » and told her that the line she quoted as evidence was from one of Shakespeare's sonnets and not from Henry IV.

I'm nerd-raging over Shakespeare in French in my dreams. :lol: That also reminds me that I want to read some Shakespeare in French for my SC.

Shadow-walking

The last three days, including today, I've walked 25 minutes without breaks. I have been using the audio from the FSI Sub-Saharan French FAST course this weeks for my walks. I'm curious about the course and I just wanted to see what it teaches--so far, nothing new for me.

Swedish

I am also looking at the FSI Basic Swedish course. I'm not a beginner with Swedish but I'm struggling to get back to studying it. I kind of had an epiphany the other day about why: my motivation for studying Swedish, unlike most of my other TLs, is almost purely social. Yet studying it has largely been a solitary activity, so it feels like I'm not approaching it in a way that will get me where I want to be with it. I think now that I'm more conscious of the cognitive dissonance I'm experiencing with teaching myself Swedish, I can cope with it. The FSI course seems like a nice, structured avenue to get back into studying it, since I just can't get myself motivated to work on Swedish on Clozemaster or Duolingo at the moment. I also need to look into things like Swedish TV and social media to help motivate me as well.

Japanese

I started using the NHK ELer Japanese app this week. I've been anxious ot get started with Japanese again and an app is a little easier to use while resting in bed than my Kanji workbook (although I do have a lap table and a small clip-on lamp specifically for studying in bed :geek: ). I'm aiming for doing that every other day. Right now I'm doing a mix of the lessons (mostly review for me) and trying to read some of the Easy News.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 18 / 365

  • Day 17 -- Gaelic/Irish: Wrote an entry in my Gaelic journal, about the vegetable and bean soup I made for dinner the night before; reviewed 5 more decayed units on my Duolingo Irish tree

  • Day 18 -- French: Did exercises 9.7, 9.8, 9.9 and 9.10 in French Sentence Builder, completing Unit 9; started an entry in my journal about the dream I had last night--didn't finish it but wrote over 100 words
7 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
MamaPata
Brown Belt
Posts: 1019
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 9:25 am
Location: London
Languages: English (N), French (C1*), Russian (B1), Spanish (B1).

Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3004
x 1807

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby MamaPata » Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:10 am

That is dedication both to French and to Shakespeare!
3 x
Corrections appreciated.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:17 pm

How else would I be able to follow Shakespeare's word play in Henry V? :lol:

(I tried to find a You Tube clip of Emma Thompson as Katherine in Kenneth Branagh's version, but couldn't, so you folks will just have to make do with a young Judi Dench)

3 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Sat Jan 19, 2019 5:43 pm

Done with my studying for the morning, so I'm going to update all this stuff before I go off and do my regular Saturday house cleaning and video gaming. Have a good weekend, everyone!

French Films SC : 41 / 100 -- 3724 minutes (+109 minutes)

  • watched 2 episodes of Les Revenants - 109 minutes

    My French viewing has been limited because I let myself get sucked into binge-watching a series on Netflix that's only available in English. I think I just needed a little break from watching Netflix for mostly French, German, Spanish and Japanese content. I'm almost done with that series, so I can get back to being a good little language learner soon. :P

French Books SC : 22 / 100 -- 1081 pages (no change this update)

  • currently reading Les trois Mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas

Gaelic Films SC : 14 / 100 -- 1272 minutes (no change this update)

  • currently working on 2nd viewing of Guthan nan Eilean Series 2: Outdoors on Clilstore with the transcripts

Gaelic Books SC : 14 / 100 -- 715 pages (+35 pages)

  • finished Famhair agus dain Ghàidhlig eile/Giant and other Gaelic poems (Gaelic/English text) -- 105 pages of Gaelic poetry divided by 3 for the poetry penalty (kind of a bummer that there's a such a steep penalty for reading poetry in this challenge but whatever): +35 pages



Short Story challenge

  • Week 1: Gaelic -- "Top Twenties" by Michael Klevenhaus, from An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst, Leabhar 1
  • Week 2: French -- "Les révoltés de la Bounty" by Jules Verne
  • Week 3: Welsh -- "Côt Ruby" by Sarah Reynold, from Cawl: a Straeon Eraill

    "Côt Ruby" is the first and shortest of the stories in this collection. I didn't have too much trouble with it, but it did have a lot of new vocabulary for me. Feeling rather good about reading stories like this in Welsh. :)



The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 19 / 365

  • Day 19 -- Welsh: This morning, I cherry-picked 11 verbs--cipio, pendroni, tarfu ar, baglu, dwgyd, gorfodi, maddau, ebychu, cyrcydi, disgleirio--from the word list for the short story "Côt Ruby" for post-reading focused study, writing them down in my notebook, along with the sentence from the story that used that verb. By the way, baglu is another good wordfor Welsh learners to know--means to trip, stumble or fumble, both physically and figuratively, like when you are fumbling to find the correct word to use. ;)
2 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Mon Jan 21, 2019 5:00 pm

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! I'm suppose to return to work (again) this week, supposedly having recovered enough to do so (probably not, to be honest--I almost went to the ER yesterday), but the schools are closed today because it's a federal holiday. So instead of educating kids, I'm home, tidying up my study area and working on some Gaelic stuff, just as the good Dr. King would have wanted. Right? Right?

Life in this country is just absurd. :roll:

Anyhow, yes, I had a health scare last night, but it passed, fortunately. Since my cardiac event earlier in the month, my blood pressure and heart rhythm are prone to get wildly out of control, and yesterday evening was one of those times. But on the bright side, when I was lying down resting, waiting for my cardiovascular system to calm the bleep down, I read my short story for the week. :D

Short Story challenge

  • Week 1: Gaelic -- "Top Twenties" by Michael Klevenhaus, from An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst, Leabhar 1
  • Week 2: French -- "Les révoltés de la Bounty" by Jules Verne
  • Week 3: Welsh -- "Côt Ruby" by Sarah Reynold, from Cawl: a Straeon Eraill
  • Week 4: Gaelic -- "A' Bhein Òir" by Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn

    Stòrlann put together some study materials to accompany "A' Bheinn Òir" to use in Gaelic-medium school with older students, and I'll be working those this week since I finished my story for the week so early.



The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 21 / 365

  • Day 20 -- French: Finished the journal entry I didn't finished the other day. Then I watched 2 Français Avec Pierre videos: first, his most recent one, "7 astuces pour parler comme un Français--Pierre and Naomi are so goofy, I love it--and then an older one on C'est vs Il est, because like many other learners, I have to periodically review this grammar topic, as it's just not something that comes intuitively to most native English speakers, like me. :oops: At least I'm at the point where my intuition is trained from lots of reading and grammar exercise drudgery to pick the right one most of the time, but, yeah, I don't claim to be fluent for a reason. Well, several reasons, actually...

  • Day 21 -- Gaelic: Watched the Stòrlann video about Iain a' Ghobhainn and did the exercises related to it in the pasgan an sgoilier. I also watched another video of a US-born Gaelic speaker who now works in Scotland that was on Stòrlann's new You Tube channel--that speaker is also featured in some of the Guthan Nan Eilean interviews, because, surprise!, the world of Gaelic speakers is kind of small. But it's interesting to me because I easily can count the number of US-born fluent L2 Gaelic speakers like Liam (video below) that I personally know of on one hand, without my thumb (Canada is another story, however--many more success stories there). As for "A' Beinn Òir" I also listened to the audio of the first 2 chapters without text to make myself really follow the audio.



6 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
zjones
Green Belt
Posts: 483
Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:22 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), French (B1-certified), Spanish and Greek (abandoned)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9860
x 1404

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby zjones » Mon Jan 21, 2019 9:43 pm

Cèid Donn wrote:[list][*]Day 20 -- French: Finished the journal entry I didn't finished the other day. Then I watched 2 Français Avec Pierre videos: first, his most recent one, "7 astuces pour parler comme un Français--Pierre and Naomi are so goofy, I love it--and then an older one on C'est vs Il est, because like many other learners, I have to periodically review this grammar topic, as it's just not something that comes intuitively to most native English speakers, like me. :oops: At least I'm at the point where my intuition is trained from lots of reading and grammar exercise drudgery to pick the right one most of the time, but, yeah, I don't claim to be fluent for a reason. Well, several reasons, actually...


Yikes! I hope you start to feel much better very soon, but if you don't, remember that taking care of your body is your first priority! On the other hand, I'm pretty impressed that you were able to read a short story when you were waiting for your heart rate to slow down. I always find it difficult to focus on languages when I'm distressed or in pain.

C'est / Il est... you are not the only one who regularly has to refresh your knowledge on this grammar topic. Like you, I have enough input to make the correct choice most of the time, but it always feels a little treacherous. I don't like not knowing why I've chosen one over the other, but the rules regarding C'est / Il est are sometimes strange and I don't always feel like putting in the effort to understand the differences. So basically:

I'm lazy. :roll:
1 x

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:38 am

Thanks. :) It is kind of hard for me to read when I'm not feeling well either, but when you have a scare like that it tends to get your anxiety and adrenaline up, which doesn't help either. So I find it's better to try to channel that nervous energy into something calming like reading or watching videos. Also, reading in Gaelic might be my strongest skill of any of my TLs, so it's not as much work (and I've read a few other stories by this same author in the past, so I'm familiar with his writing style).

zjones wrote:C'est / Il est... you are not the only one who regularly has to refresh your knowledge on this grammar topic. Like you, I have enough input to make the correct choice most of the time, but it always feels a little treacherous. I don't like not knowing why I've chosen one over the other, but the rules regarding C'est / Il est are sometimes strange and I don't always feel like putting in the effort to understand the differences. So basically:

I'm lazy. :roll:


Yeah, it just takes repetition for me. Grammar rules don't really stick with me unless they make sense to me, and the rules for this seem arbitrary, even though I know that's my English-speaking brain that thinks that. It's logical to the French-speaking brain, and at times I feel like my brain is getting to that point. Even so, this sort of thing is understandable to me if it's coming from a fluent French speaker, but when it's turned around and I'm trying to articulate myself with il est/c'est, it suddenly becomes a lot foggier and I hate that.

Ah, the learning process. It's a demon. :twisted:
2 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:33 am

Uuuuggghhh, I tore the cornea in one of my eyes this morning. It's making reading a bit difficult. Ok, more than that--it's making reading massively annoying, because my vision already isn't great (I need reading glasses, is what I'm saying). So this will likely be a light week for me, reading-wise. Good thing I got my short story for the week done already.

As IronMike mentioned in his log, today's episode of Jeopardy had a category about languages. Now, not to try to make anyone else feel small, but I got them all correct. :P Of course it helped that 1) one answer was the family most my TLs belong to, 2) one is a language for which there is demand for translators in my area because of the current refugee crisis at the US-MX border, 3) one I studied in the past and 4) another one I have been studying periodically for several years now. The fifth I knew simply from remembering news regarding the group mentioned in the question.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 22 / 365

  • Day 22 -- French/Indonesian: Did 1 dictée rogue at Une dictée par jour, "À skis en Laponie." Then to rest my eyes, I did 15 minutes of shadowing in Indonesian with 50Language files.
5 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests