Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

[StringerBell]

Podcasts: I mainly listen to Kryminatorium (which comes with transcripts), Polski daily (great)

I have never heard of either of these; I'm excited to check them out! Thanks for mentioning them. Do you listen to the Real Polish podcasts on iTunes? I know that if you're a VIP member, you also get access to transcripts. I've considered doing the VIP membership, but as of now, I'm listening to them without the transcripts and I can understand well enough that it's not a problem.

Books: I have started a few but given up on each occasion. It's was simply too painful for me. Too many words that not in common use.

After I finished the RealPolish 365 intermediate course, I had a similar "rocky" transition, since his materials are really good and it felt easy to get into a routine with them where I felt like I was progressing at a nice pace. Once I was done, jumping into native materials was terrifying and felt impossible. I really felt like I wasn't ready. I agree that Polish is a difficult language to dive into, but with time and patience it feels like it's slowly starting to work. Big emphasis on the time and patience....whenever I'm tempted to compare my progress in Polish to my progress in Italian, I have to remind myself that it's a Cat 4 language for Eng speakers for a reason.

When I first started with novels, it was so hard that I was convinced it was a waste of time. I'm still not yet at at a point where I can pick up a Polish book and just read it. But I found that if I chose a book originally in English, I could read a chapter in English first to understand what was happening, then read it in Polish while listening to the Polish audiobook. I breezed through a few novels like this, and it was actually really enjoyable. Then afterward, I'd listen to the audiobook without the text. Have you ever tried this?

Very seldom do I bother to look up words or write anything down. For the most part I simply listen, firstly with english transcript/subtitles (thanks google auto-translate) and then with Polish transcript/subtitles a few times. At that point I call it a day. Polish is such an immensely complex language that I'm simply going to have to be patient and allow my brain to absorb all the intricacies of the language.

I've noticed that unless I look things up and take notes, I just don't remember very well. Not taking notes worked well as a beginner (in both Polish and Italian) but I've found that as an intermediate, the learning curve is a lot steeper and unless I take notes and spend time to look up expressions or sentences that I don't understand, things just slip out of my grasp too quickly and it's like I never encountered them at all.

One thing that seems to be helping a lot (both in Polish and Italian) is that as I watch a show, I jot down expressions or sentences that I can understand but would not come up with on my own in a conversation. I use those epressions for scriptorium practice. Is this something you would ever try, or do you prefer to stick to your approach of just listening? What is your motivation for learning Polish? Do you do any speaking (with a language exchange partner or tutor)?

Thank you for sharing your resources, and I hope you'll continue to post here - or maybe even start a log of your own that I can follow!

[Polish Paralysis]

I have never heard of either of these; I'm excited to check them out!

I hope you enjoy them. Kryminatorium might not be to everyone's taste, but having free access to the transcript makes invaluable to me. In general, I like to restrain myself to listening to content about a particular subject for a period of time. That way I pick up all the vocabulary related to that subject without ever really having to make a concerted effort to remember vocabulary. Using Kryminatorium as an example, I was completely lost at the beginning but then I google translated everything and listened and read (L1) simultaneously a few times and before I knew it, I was able to understand everything and at this point I feel much more comfortable in my vocabulary related to all things criminal. I suppose, I pretty much employ the L-R technique but for shorter periods of time.

Polski daily is another Polish learners resource (similar to Real Polish). It deals with quite a few interesting issues.

I've considered doing the VIP membership, but as of now, I'm listening to them without the transcripts and I can understand well enough that it's not a problem.

I also found that I did not need transcripts. I could look up any individual words I did not know easily enough as Piotr's voice is always pitch perfect. As for the VIP membership, I am in the currently doing a cost/benefits analysis of my own and I can't really justify it at the moment. I simply don't find his explanations of phrases and such like as valuable as simply having lots of interesting content to listen to.

Do you listen to the Real Polish podcasts on iTunes?

I listen on the Real Polish site itself.

I breezed through a few novels like this, and it was actually really enjoyable. Then afterward, I'd listen to the audiobook without the text. Have you ever tried this?

I tried doing is a few (maybe 3) months back and I found it be very difficult. The problem with books for me is the lack of a boundary between today's work and tomorrow. I end up trying to listen to an audiobook for hours at a time at the beginning and end up burning myself out and hating the process. I do however feel that now that I have slowly introduced myself to some real native content, I would be in a better position to start reading in Polish and I think you maybe have just given me the push I required to do so.

I have tried to read books that I have already read but I always end up just defaulting to L-R (which in some ways is exactly the same thing, just with a quick re-read English).

unless I take notes and spend time to look up expressions or sentences that I don't understand, things just slip out of my grasp too quickly and it's like I never encountered them at all.

I simply don't think I would be able to summon enough motivation to do that. I have even convinced myself at times that I should try out Luca's method of bi-directional translation, which I thought might be very useful for improving my language production skills but I always end up resorting to what I find easiest, sadly. A great suggestion I once heard was to use any unfamiliar vocabulary to create sentences of your own and in a way personalise. Again, I simply prefer to sit down/walk and listen.

What is your motivation for learning Polish?

My fiance is Polish-American and a good portion of her family doesn't speak English (including her mother) so learning Polish to a comfortable conversational level would greatly benefit me from that point of view. I also love the complexity and sound of the language.

Do you do any speaking (with a language exchange partner or tutor)?

I use a weekly tutor on iTalki. I find that the easiest way to learn Polish grammar for me is to make lots of mistakes. When I find out what was wrong the lesson is learnt for good. It also really help cement new words in my memory. I've realised I recognise a lot of verbs in context but struggle with actually learning them once and for all. I find talking, even just a little helps me in that respect.

Thank you for sharing your resources, and I hope you'll continue to post here - or maybe even start a log of your own that I can follow!

One more has actually just come to mind. Outriders brief. You can access audio on an app called Lecton. It pretty much last weeks news read to you with transcripts. It does, however, come with a small monthly subscription fee.

Anyway, you're most welcome. Anything I can do to help. Your log has been invaluable to me. Maybe one of these days I will start one of my own but as for now I will just come back here every now and again to check in on your progress and let you know if I discover anything useful.

[cjareck]

[Maybe one of these days I will start one of my own but as for now I will just come back here every now and again to check in on your progress and let you know if I discover anything useful.

I would encourage you to do so. It will not only make asking for help easier but also provide you with motivation for further study.

[Polish Paralysis]

I would encourage you to do so. It will not only make asking for help easier but also provide you with motivation for further study.

Ok, I will definitely do so in the near future.

[StringerBell]

LATIN:
Finished Stage 6 so I am now 50% done with the Cambridge book. Things are starting to get a little more challenging now that 2 past tenses have been introduced, but so far so good. When I start doing some Latin for the day, I first listen+read to all the previous sections. I think that repeatedly listening+reading to everything that came before is helping to reinforce the meaning of new words and helping me get used to reading sentences with a very different word order (verb at the end of the sentence). I started taking some notes when I encounter new words that aren't intuitive (like: ubi=where, uxor=wife, petit=heads for) and I made a table to keep track of various verb tenses. Italian continues to help, except for when I see subito which in Latin means "suddenly" while in Italian I know it to mean "immediately".

POLISH:

I feel like I'm in the middle of doing a lot of things at the moment, yet I constantly feel like I'm not doing enough (or whatever I'm doing is half-assed).

-I'm halfway through my current novel, though I've been repeatedly listening to the audiobook for this first half ad nauseam - but my comprehension of it is really good now. So it's time to breeze through the 2nd half of the novel (using the English version first), then resume looking up and taking notes on everything I don't know in the second half.
-I resumed working on the Preston Publishing course book (I'm up to page 44 out of 161, so there is still about 3/4 to left to complete). I'd like to knock off at least 2-4 pages per day, which I think is very doable.
-I'm rewatching the Ultraviolet episodes on Netflix with subtitles and jotting down notes when characters say something really useful that I'd like to be able to say.
-Doing some scriptorium with phrases and sentences I've mined from UV, messages, and Memrise.
-I'm watching Rodzinka.pl episodes (without subtitles) and getting really excited when I recognize a word here and there from Ultraviolet or Memrise.
-I just today completed the Memrise Polish Unit 6 (there's one more left to do). I haven't yet decided if I'll try to do some of the user created courses after Unit 7 or just stop using Memrise for Polish.
-I occasionally listen to a RealPolish podcast without a transcript and I am generally pleased with how well I can understand.

ITALIAN:

I'm very pleased with my new strategy of jotting down sentences that I hear that I can easily understand but I don't think I'd be able to produce if I were having a conversation. I've been doing this with the episodes of Lucifer that I'm watching in Italian, and then I use these for scriptorium. This makes TV watching feel less passive and I actually can tell that certain phrases are becoming automatic because they periodically pop into my head throughout the day.

A lot of these sentences involve the use of congiuntivo, like "credo che tu sappia che cosa devi fare" (I think you know what you need to do). A lot of times I know that a sentence requires congiuntivo, but I can't figure out how to conjugate it because I've never actually studied congiuntivo. Other things I've noted are short and sweet like "io non c'entro niente" (I've got nothing to do with it/it's got nothing to do with me) and "non ce l'ho con te" (I got no beef with you)

I haven't done any more in my Practice Makes Perfect book... ...I am really dragging my heals when it comes to this, I don't know why. I'll try to do a little more with that book today.

I had the idea to start creating transcripts of some show in Italian since accurate subtitles pretty much don't exist in Italian. I'd get it checked by my spouse to make sure I don't have a bunch of stupid errors. I'd like to post it somewhere online where other people could make use of it, but I'm not sure which show I should do this with, and I'm not sure how to go about posting it somewhere (I'd like to not pay money to create a website). Anyone got suggestions?

[rdearman]

Saw this, thought of you. Polish Ebooks Public Domain. https://wolnelektury.pl/

[StringerBell]

Thank you! I have that site linked on my Polish resources pages (though it's not labelled with the website name; I will try to remember to edit the name of the link so it's more obvious the next time I add resources to that page). This is a good reminder to use these free ebooks/audiobooks once I'm done with my current stash.

[StringerBell]

LATIN:

I have just finished Stage 7. I've started slowing down a bit because I'm trying to take my time with the new words and verb tenses, rather than trying to race through it. It seems like there are certain words that just don't want to stick and I can either ignore them or look them up 100 times - I usually opt for repeatedly looking them up in the hope that at some point they'll stick. Why did I think Latin would be fun? I am still enjoying the stories and the background history on Roman culture. Did Romans seriously used to exclaim "Eheu!"? It sounds ridiculous.

POLISH:

I've decided that I will make finishing the Preston course my priority, so I've been starting with that every day. I've been able to do 4 pages per day, so I'm making decent progress (I'm up to pg 67 now). I'm really taking a lot of time with it, I do the exercises, check them against the book's version, then rewrite everything and then take notes on the grammar points presented. I like this book because it introduces grammar points sparingly - a little bit at a time - and I'm finding the answers to things that have long been frustrating me. I'm currently in the section that practices a lot with Biernik (the Accusative case) and I notice that I'm absorbing it fairly easily. I think this book will really help to polish up (no pun intended) some of my rough edges.

ITALIAN:

I've been diligently working on my Practice Makes Perfect book. It was smooth sailing for a while, until I hit direct and indirect pronouns and then all hell broke loose and I remembered why I hate course books; they make me feel incompetent. To be fair, it's not the fault of the book, I actually think this book is quite good. It's Italian grammar. There is just no reason for things to be so damn complicated! Maybe it is just that I am incompetent when it comes to grammar. I decided to just ignore this chapter and move on once I surpassed my threshold for frustration. Maybe I'll cycle back to it, maybe I'll find a way to speak Italian without pronouns, or maybe I'll just continue to make mistakes here and there and not care. You hear that, Italian? F--- you and your 1,000 stupid pronouns!!!

I've been continuing to reread intensively The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I listened to 2 podcast episodes from the series La Società dei Ghetti (from Alle Otto della Sera) and I've finished 6 episodes of Lucifer season 4 in Italian with notes on things I'd like to use for scriptorium. Even without doing scriptorium, I actually remember a lot of things just from the act of taking notes, so this seems to be a good use of time. I also started Il Sentiero della Speranza (which is an Italian translation of the French novel Sombre Sentier, a crime thriller about a murder investigation in the seedy underworld 1980s Paris). I'm planning to read this extensively and look up no more than 1 word per page (or less). I really don't feel like I will benefit from extensive reading at this stage, but everyone else seems to think it's great, so I'm giving it a shot because what do I know?

[Ezra]

Well, Italian really does have overabundance of pronouns! One does not have to fear them to go out of stock .

[StringerBell]

POLISH:

Awhile back I mentioned having great difficulty in determining whether a noun was singular or plural. I finally reached the part of the Preston book that explains this mystery and all I can say is: what a confusing system for pluralizing nouns! I started taking notes on how to pluralize on one page thinking that I could fit everything on the 2/3 of a page that was left...but then ran out of room and needed a whole other page (and this is not even everything!)

I have some questions:

1) The book explains that there are "2 groups" in terms of how things get pluralized:
[1] Masculine Personal Plurals (men, or a group containing at least 1 man), and
[2] Non-Masculine Personal Plurals (women, and ALL other nouns including objects and animals)

The book keeps referring to masculine or non-masculine "personal plurals" but for the life of me, I can't understand what they mean by "personal plurals".

The real question is this: from the examples I can find in the book, it seems that when you make a noun plural, it is the same in Mianownik (Nominative) and Biernik (Accusative). Is this true?

Mianownik singular: kawa
Mianownik plural: kawy
Biernik plural: kawy - Mam trzy duże kawy.