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

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

Postby Elsa Maria » Sat Nov 30, 2019 3:43 pm

I am having the same experience with Assimil Dutch that you are having with Lingua Latina. I don't like the Assimil course, and as a consequence I am not-so-coincidentally finding it difficult to get around to working on Dutch. It's hard for me to think of programs that get more love here than Assimil and Lingua Latina :)
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Nov 30, 2019 5:38 pm

Elsa Maria wrote:I am having the same experience with Assimil Dutch that you are having with Lingua Latina. I don't like the Assimil course, and as a consequence I am not-so-coincidentally finding it difficult to get around to working on Dutch. It's hard for me to think of programs that get more love here than Assimil and Lingua Latina :)

I like Assimil, but it’s not equally good in all languages. Also, I find that I need a more standard course alongside it.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Mon Dec 02, 2019 12:53 am

rdearman wrote:You can always speed up the audio to say 1.5 speed which will cut the time by 25%. :)


I thought about that, but since the reason I'm doing this is to improve my passive vocabulary, I want to make sure I can hear the words clearly and with time to process the meaning. I'm a little worried that speeding up the audio might reduce my ability to give each word the attention it deserves. I may give this a try, just to see how it goes.

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LATIN:

I have to say it: Lingua Latina killed my enthusiasm for Latin. I genuinely can't understand why this book has the reputation it does. It makes me feel like I'm crazy for being the only one who doesn't dig it. I finally went back to it, and after skipping the rest of the dry "geography" pages, I started in on the pages describing members of a family, who I assume will be front and center in future stories. The problem is that the first pages are so mindnumbingly boring and are clearly written solely for the purpose of hammering in case endings that I can't focus on them - I keep naturally skipping ahead to try to find something of interest. The problem is, there is nothing of interest ahead, and then suddenly I realized that I passed over all these dull sentences without getting from them what I'm supposed to get - so I go back and reread them for a few seconds until I inevitably start skipping ahead. I really don't get how I'm supposed to get into this book. I keep thinking it must get better, but when?

So in the midst of all this futzing around/procrastination with Lingua Latina, I lost both my enthusiasm and routine. I think the only chance I have to get it back is to reread the Cambridge Unit 1 as a brief refresher and then dive into Unit 2. I really don't want to give up on LL, but reading it feels like Chinese water torture.

ITALIAN:

I've been making excellent progress with my novel. I decided to count the actual pages, and it turns out there's 245 pages worth of text, which makes sense with the length of the audiobook and the average I calculated (2.5 min/page). In order for me to complete a SC within 1 year using this R-L format, I'll need 1hr 40 min/day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks. At first this seemed daunting, mainly because I was thinking that I'd have to do that in one solid block of time. I'm not a fan of stopping part way through chapters, but I've been doing 20-30 minutes here and there in the last days, and it can really add up. Also, knowing that I can stop whenever I want makes me paradoxically spend much longer doing R-L. When I was aiming to do a complete chapter twice in one sitting, I was kind of dreading it, and then avoiding it.

When I woke up this morning, I started thinking about how I should record myself to see how it felt to talk for 10 minutes nonstop. I started thinking about a topic in my head, and was surprised by how fluid it felt. I thought: I'm going to nail this! Well, I should have recorded myself shortly after doing my mental monologue, but I didn't get around to it until the evening. I couldn't recreate whatever I had been thinking at all - I think the pressure of being timed and recorded gave me an instant block. I did manage to talk for 10 minutes, but boy was it labored and awful. I'm hoping that as I get used to this format, sentences will start flowing more easily. Even though it was labored, I think that talking for 10 minutes/day is definitely doable.

I've also been writing 200+ words/day, and that also feels very doable. All in all, I think that the combo 1 yr SC/Output Challenge is within reach.

POLISH:

Where it might get a little sticky is doing a SC in Polish. 1hr 40 min/day for 5 days is only ~8.3 hours/week. Considering that I did a full year of 21 hours/week, I don't know why 8.3 hours would be unattainable. I just have to get back into the mindset of using my time more efficiently. I'm hoping that focusing on reading/listening will help to revive my passion for Polish, because it's what I really enjoy doing. I only started having problems when I tried to learn and apply grammar in an attempt to improve my speaking ability. As long as I can accept that I will never speak this language even at a basic level decently, I might be able to just enjoy it passively.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby lavengro » Mon Dec 02, 2019 1:07 am

StringerBell wrote:ITALIAN:

I've been working like a fiend this past week; I finally finished transcribing all 10 episodes of Lucifer (episodes 9 and 10 are awaiting corrections). ....

Grazie mille StringerBell for making all your hard work available to other learners! I am looking forward to using your transcripts to improve my listening comprehension, and expect what you have created will be a tremendous resource for many.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Fri Dec 06, 2019 8:40 pm

lavengro wrote:Grazie mille StringerBell for making all your hard work available to other learners! I am looking forward to using your transcripts to improve my listening comprehension, and expect what you have created will be a tremendous resource for many.


Thanks! I hope you make use of them, because I'm not sure anyone else will! I don't know why it's taking so long to get the last remaining 2 episodes corrected and posted, but hopefully I'll get that done soon.

************************************************

ITALIAN:

I have 13% left in my audiobook. Doing R-L (listening 2x in Italian, reading 1x in English, 1x in Italian) has been taking awhile but I think it's worth it. My comprehension when I get to reading+listening in Italian is significantly better than if I didn't do the first pass with an English text. I decided that after doing ~3 books using R-L, I'm going to cycle back and read through the Italian books without the audiobook since multiple readings are allowed in the SC.

I feel like I'm on the verge of a jump in Italian; I've been thinking more in Italian and speaking/writing is starting to feel easier and more intuitive. I still have a long way to go, but something is definitely happening.

I've been picking up some really fun and useful expressions from my novel. My favorite is:
Che barba! = what a drag! (lit: what a beard)
È stata una barba = it was a drag (lit: it was a beard)


My choice of books is predominately novels written in first person or non-fiction. I am being extra careful to avoid the dreaded passato remoto narration because my goal in reading is to help improve my speaking. My current novel is multiple-character first-person narration, and I notice that during certain passages where a character is recounting something that happened decades ago, it slips into passato remoto - these passages feel completely useless to me. I wish it weren't so difficult to find writing that accurately reflects how people speak. This really makes me appreciate that this problem doesn't exist in English or Polish.

*****I read in Eido's log where she mentioned switching her Quora account into Spanish. I had always assumed that Quora was a pay site (I don't know why). I was inspired to create an account (for free!) and switched my settings into Italian. It seems like there are a ton of language options. You have to choose a minimum of 10 categories to follow (kind of like Reddit). In about 5 minutes, I had a huge feed populated with a massive amount of Italian content in the form of posts, questions, comments, etc. It's like creating a massive social media feed without having to do the work of figuring out who to follow. This is such a great time-saving hack. Thank you, Eido!

POLISH:

I started relistening to old intermediate Real Polish podcasts that I knew very well (at least at some point). To my surprise, I was able to understand them very easily. It looks like I haven't forgotten everything! I decided that I would do a little refreshing from now until January, when I start my R-L challenge in Polish.

LATIN:

Still haven't gotten back in the swing of things... I'm having a hard time re-establishing my routine. Since my in-laws will be here in a few days, I think I'll wait for January to try to resume this language.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:47 pm

Finished my first novel using R-L!

I already mentioned that even though reading through a novel twice is time consuming, I am seeing immediate benefits. I'm repeating this more as a note to myself, so that I don't feel tempted to give up in it prematurely due to impatience. Aside from a 100% comprehension (which I think is enough on its own) I'm also starting to assimilate verb tenses, specifically trickier ones that always feel elusive when I want to use them. While things are not always translated 100%, there is something extremely effective about repeatedly seeing certain constructions (like: "I would have been") while hearing them in another language. It's a really chill, pleasant way to reinforce stuff that otherwise would be brutally boring.

I was originally planning to count this first novel in my SC starting in Jan because I won't be able to properly start until the second week of January. Now I'm thinking I won't count this reading toward anything, and when January rolls around, I'll reread the book I just finished without doing R-L. It will be interesting to see what I remember and how easy/difficult it is.

I'm calling what I'm planning to do a SC, but maybe I shouldn't. My goal is to complete 5,000 pages in 1 year. I'm not planning to keep track of "films"/audio because that part of the SC doesn't interest me. I'm also not starting when the SC officially starts, so maybe calling it "SC" is more confusing than useful. Perhaps I should call it my "5,000 pages in 1 Yr" challenge. Typing "SC" is a lot easier, though!
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Sun Dec 08, 2019 3:36 pm

I got lost in a rabbit hole reading various Italian Quora questions and responses this morning for about 2 hours. I'm surprised by how easy and pleasurable the experience was; I was able to read a lot of text fairly quickly and with very good comprehension. What a different experience compared to reading novels! With novels (without a parallel text), I feel like I'm lost in a frustrating fog of kind-of-understanding but not really.

I'm trying to pay more attention to how I read. I instinctively read fast in Italian without mentally pronouncing words unless I force myself to slow down and do it. I'm focusing on hearing an inner voice when I read.

What I love about reading on Quora is the huge range of topics; it's impossible to get bored.

I also posted a comment in Italian! I have been very reluctant for a long time to publicly post anything in Italian. I'm just now slowly starting to post things here and there. I posted a message on the Patreon board of Podcast Italiano, which in the past I would have done in English. I know that posting things on sites related to language learning are likely to be encouraging rather than critical, so it feels safe. But posting on Italian Quora, man that was a little intimidating. I think a part of my Output Challenge starting in January will involve posting/sending messages.

My in-laws should arrive this evening. I'm hoping this year goes better than last year in terms of my ability to speak Italian. I'm trying to have no expectations about my abilities as a way to avoid shutting down in response to not meeting them.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby garyb » Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:30 pm

Posting on Quora is brave, congrats! I have seen quite a few non-native speakers posting on the Spanish and Italian sections, so it does seem somewhat "normal" and less intimidating than many forums. Still, not by much!

I do find with Quora that the same or very similar questions come up time and time again, as there are incentives to post questions that will get the most answers regardless of quality. Plus many of the Italian top answers are from the one guy. But hey, repetition is good and if I ever need to move to Milan I'll have a great idea of how much money one needs to live comfortably there ;). I also try to avoid questions and answers translated from the English site, as they're less culturally interesting and the translations often feel unnatural.

Despite my criticisms it's a very useful resource that's getting much more Italian input into my life since it's easy to read on the move or when I have a spare few minutes of time that I'd otherwise waste. And I should take inspiration from your example and try to contribute too!
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby eido » Sun Dec 08, 2019 8:30 pm

The Spanish Quora has a wide array of topics... though I'm sure we're interested in different things.

A couple nights ago I managed to read like a 7 or 8 paragraph essay someone wrote as an answer to some question I can't remember the gist of... but it was about sexual assault and it was very enlightening because it brought a new perspective to the table, not only from the person's individual standpoint that they offered, but from a culturally significant one as well.

I actually like reading en español more because while sometimes the subject matter covered can repeat, there's enough curious and emotionally open people out there willing to share their experience to renew and refresh well-trod ground.

Speaking of culture, this website is fantastic. It's a microcosm of a bigger world you may never get to see, and the types of questions that get asked, how people respond, and how people react to those responses are indicative of wider cultural patterns. Because it's only a tiny piece of the pie, you don't get to experience 3D authenticity, but it's surely a good stand-in, with the richness it provides in such small slices.

I wonder, are there any other websites that provide cultural context in the same way? Surely we've got forums whose members will write in your target language, but I don't know if that's quite the same... Maybe I'm overthinking this ;)
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Wed Dec 11, 2019 4:33 pm

Sit Rep: So far, so good.

My in-laws arrived a few days ago. Since they speak no English, I have been speaking to them in Italian. I switch back and forth between Italian and English with my husband, depending on what I need to say. Knowing that I can switch to English eliminates the frustration of not being able to say certain things due to a lack of active vocabulary or not being able to use certain grammatical/verb constructions.

I feel like I'm making a massive amount of mistakes with terrible pronunciation, but I got feedback that I'm actually not doing as bad as I think, so I don't really know how to gauge how I'm speaking. Certain things are really easy to say, others I struggle with but somehow manage to say something that's at least understandable.

One thing that has definitely improved is my use of passato prossimo vs. imperfetto. Before I was just randomly choosing between these verb tenses but now I seem to be mostly using the right one.

I've been incorporating a few expressions that I picked up from the novel I just finished. When the main character said that he really liked something, he'd say, "mi piace da morire", which I've been using here and there.
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