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

[cjareck]

I started working on Chapter 3 of the Polish Tutor textbook. Apparently there are seven verb pattern families...uh...I thought there were two! Yikes, I've been living in a nice little oblivion, I guess. Maybe this explains why I can never quite get a grip on what verb conjugations are supposed to be. I've started some grand designs of making some huge verb pattern family chart on my bedroom wall, like those crazy idea boards that detectives make in TV shows when trying to solve a particularly heinous and difficult crime, and then someone comes to their apartment and realizes how obsessed and crazy they are over the case.

We never learn patterns of verbs, at least not at a 'normal' school. We acquire them naturally. Perhaps students of Polish language have to learn them.
Nevertheless, be prepared that the number of exceptions may be quite impressive. I already stated this somewhere (here?) that my children sometimes try to apply pattern where they should use an exception. This probably what awaits you if you learn patterns, not the verbs themselves.

[StringerBell]

you could go into Options > Reviews tab > Maximum reviews/day and set it to something lower for a while as a psychological measure (and to prevent the number from climbing ever higher!).

This is helpful, thank you!

I'm not sure yet if I want to revisit those cards or just get rid of them and stop Anki/start over. I kind of enjoy the process of making a card, but not so much the process of reviewing them. I do think that practicing recall is useful, but I'm just not a fan of flashcards for this purpose....I haven't used Anki in almost 2 months and so far I don't think it's hampered me, so I'm leaning toward suspending it indefinitely.

We never learn patterns of verbs, at least not at a 'normal' school. We acquire them naturally. Perhaps students of Polish language have to learn them.
Nevertheless, be prepared that the number of exceptions may be quite impressive. I already stated this somewhere (here?) that my children sometimes try to apply pattern where they should use an exception. This probably what awaits you if you learn patterns, not the verbs themselves.

Yes, I do remember you mentioning those exceptions! It surprised me at first to hear that you don't study verb patterns in school, but now that I think about it, it makes sense that you would just pick up conjugations naturally. When you are talking and want to use an uncommon verb (that's regular) that you may not have come across very often, do you just guess at the conjugation or do you have a good feel for the conjugations based on lots of exposure even if you've not formally studied them?

I will probably end up practicing only on the most useful/common verb conjugations, since there's just so many verbs!

[cjareck]

Sorry, I misinformed you. I asked my oldest daughter (5th grade) - do you learn about verb conjugations at school? And she said - yes we had it a lot in the past (3rd and 4th grades), but I knew them all already. I simply do not remember what happened 20 - 25 years ago

For the second part, I have interesting experiences from today. At first, my 5-year-old son said proudly:
"Dwa domy palą, a nie dwie domy palą". He saw smoke from chimneys and mean that ovens are heating them. He was happy to recognize the gender of the noun.
The second twin gave the proof about what I was talking about:
- "Jak się nazywało to, dzięki czemu parowozy mogły jechać?"
- "Węgiel"
- "Dlaczego nie ma kopalni węgielu" - what was an example of applying a pattern. But in this case, he should say "Węgla."

[StringerBell]

Well, your twins are speaking way better than I can (I understood all the words they used except for "parowozy", but I'd just never be able to put them together like that), so for now I will dream about one day speaking like a 5 year old!

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

ITALIAN:
Quick update: I had my first Italian LE of 2019 and I can say that my hiatus is officially over. It went much better than expected; in fact, I asked at the beginning for some extra patience since I was positive I would be vey rusty and struggle to speak (especially because I'd only done Polish earlier that day and didn't have time to listen to some Italian to switch the language levers in my brain. And wouldn't you know I actually spoke quite well! Well...at least as well as I used to speak. Then last night, I decided to re-read the Jack Reacher book I had originally read intensively about a year ago and struggled with. I was convinced it would be really unpleasant and difficult to get through, but I sailed right through the first 2 chapters.

So this confirms my suspicions that having low-to-no expectations is critical for me. I was expecting to suck, so there was no pressure on me to do really well, and that meant I was free to do well. I'm going to have to figure out how to continue with this mindset...

POLISH:
Still working on writing down all the dialogue from Ultraviolet (hopefully I will be finished with episode 2 tomorrow). I settled on a slightly new strategy with the audiobook+novel:
1) read 1-2 pages in English
2) read those pages in Polish while listening to audiobook in Polish
3) when I get to the end of the chapter, I listen+read to the whole chapter again
4) I read+listen to the chapter for a third time and look up 1 word per page.
5) listen to the chapter 2-3 times without the text (later in the day or a few days later).

I've found that looking up only 1 word per page has made it much easier to remember those few words later on. If I look up too many words I can't remember them later when I hear them, plus it makes the experience unpleasant. But one word per page seems to be the sweet spot for recognizing and understanding them later on.

[Theodisce]

Sorry, I misinformed you. I asked my oldest daughter (5th grade) - do you learn about verb conjugations at school? And she said - yes we had it a lot in the past (3rd and 4th grades), but I knew them all already. I simply do not remember what happened 20 - 25 years ago

I guess it's mostly about giving children a kind of framework so that their existing knowledge may be strengthened. Or nuanced, who knows. On the other hand, in the past Slavic (and not only Slavic) conjugations were transmitted only orally (due to illiteracy, lack of schools etc.) without getting simplified.

I record having read that apart from those basic patterns there were multiple sub-patterns in Polish, but it's something you would normally only learn as a university student (side note: in Polish - as in German and other languages - the word philology is employed to design the disciplines having to do with language and literature of a given nation/culture. So the study of Polish language and literature it called filologia polska and the same goes for other languages and literatures. The Classics - Latin and Greek - are called filologia klasyczna and you can even find filologia rosyjska alongside rosjoznawstwo - i.e. Russian studies).

[cjareck]

Well, your twins are speaking way better than I can (I understood all the words they used except for "parowozy", but I'd just never be able to put them together like that), so for now I will dream about one day speaking like a 5 year old!

Not only you Children have limited vocabulary and grammatical patterns, but what they know, they use with fluency. This is probably something like language core about which Luca Lampariello says.

The word "parowozy" means "steam engines". They know it because of my interest in cardboard models

[reineke]

'By age 5, children tend to have an expressive vocabulary of 2,100–2,200 words. By age 6, they have approximately 2,600 words of expressive vocabulary and 20,000–24,000 words of receptive vocabulary..."

"Word learning often involves physical context, builds on prior knowledge, takes place in social context, and includes semantic support. The phonological loop and serial order short-term memory may both play an important role in vocabulary development."

Wikipedia.

[StringerBell]

POLISH:

Something I'm having a hard dealing with is the fact that I never know if a noun is singular or plural. I rely on context to figure it out, and when I can't tell from context, I just throw my hands in the air and move on. I've tried multiple times to read through the complicated rules for pluralizing nouns, which I can remember for about 5 minutes and then it's lost. This feels like a pretty important thing to understand and I'm continually frustrated that I can rarely make this distinction. I'm not sure if this is something that can be improved or if I'm doomed forever to be in a singular/plural limbo.

On the bright side, episode 2 of Ultraviolet is 100% transcribed and I started on episode 3. I have also gotten through almost 1/2 of my audiobook+novel. It will be absurd if I can get myself to the point where I can read novels and watch TV shows in Polish but can't even tell if a noun is singular or plural.

ITALIAN:

Not much to update, still leisurely listening to Podcast Italiano (avanzato) episodes, and finishing watching the last few episodes of La Casa de Papel dubbed in Italian. I haven't been using the grammar book I bought...I'm scared of it, and it knows.

[cjareck]

Something I'm having a hard dealing with is the fact that I never know if a noun is singular or plural. I rely on context to figure it out, and when I can't tell from context, I just throw my hands in the air and move on.

The rules are probably really complicated, but it seems that when the noun ends with a consonant, it may not be plural. Maybe there are some exceptions, but I can not remind myself of any of them now.

(edit)
Unfortunately, the rule above applies only to the nominative case.

[StringerBell]

POLISH:

Close to 1/2 way through transcribing episode 3 of Ultraviolet. Some days I think I am really spinning my wheels and cramping my hand up for nothing and other days I'm convinced all this writing will pay off.

Time for some Polish cursing help!
I came across the word "gówno" in my novel, which the internet tells me means "shit". Is gówno considered particularly vulgar? I know that kurwa is the all-purpose curseword that can be used anywhere, anytime And cholera seems to be used more in the way we'd use "damn" or "hell" in English.

Would I be correct in saying that cholera is a relatively mild "curse" and kurwa and gówno are both much stronger?

A character in the show said, "Gówno wiecie" which in the English subtitles was translated as "You don't know shit." I guess literally in Polish this would be saying, "You know shit." Does that English translation make sense? Would you say "Gówno wiecie" to mean "you don't know shit/you don't know anything."?

Fun new expressions/vocab:
nie przejmuj się = don't worry about it ***Is this the same as "nie ma sprawy"?
nieumyślne spowodowanie śmierci = involuntary manslaughter
współpracować = to cooperate <<<this one has been popping up a lot!

ITALIAN:
I've been listening to some Scientificast podcasts lately. I find them relatively easy to understand even though they tend to speak quite fast. I'm not crazy about the series since they cover 3-4 different topics per 1 hour episode, so it feels like they cover issues very superficially, which I find a bit boring. I listen to it while brushing my teeth/ doing bathroom stuff, and for that it works well.

I'm about 5 chapters into rereading the Jack Reacher novel. I hate the way it's written; it's really crap, but I'm trying to make good use of what resources I have in my possession, and it is kind of nice to feel like I'm not struggling my way through each page. This realization that it's really nice to not have to struggle while reading led me to decide that I'm going to take a step back and read some kids/YA stuff. I found a cheap Italian Edition on AMZ of a book in the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Because it's written like a series of diary entries...NO PASSATO REMOTO!!! Yes!

I'm going to read through it and use it for some scriptorium practice. I haven't done this with Italian at all and maybe it could help me. In the spirit of trying not to have expectations with Italian, I'm going to approach it like I don't know much and if I find myself doing something that's too easy, I'll be pleasantly surprised and make whatever I'm doing a little more challenging.