Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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tricours
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Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:01 am

This is a cooperative "challenge" log between me and soldeace to keep track of our progress with Polish and Swedish. It's a very meek challenge since we have very important lives featuring cats and other things. We'll change things up every month, but the first month looks like this:

- a minimum of 20 minutes of activity every day (coursebook or whatever one might have)
- 1 page of reading every day

If not: 1.5 minutes of plank as a substitute

Every day requires a post to say what those 20 minutes (or more) were spent doing, in as much detail as the person feels like sharing, as well as an update on the reading.
1 x
: 18 / 18 Colloquial Polish :
: 2105 / 3000 Anki Cards :
: 3 / 10 Polish Books :
: 1 / 28 Polish in 4 Weeks :

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extralean
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby extralean » Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:22 am

tricours wrote:If not: 1.5 minutes of plank as a substitute


Weak. What happens when you're both so abdominally strong that this is not a challenge? Burpees; I nominate burpees.
0 x
: 53 / 52 53/52 Book Challenge. Reading: Ourania - J.M.G Le Clezio

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soldeace
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby soldeace » Mon Sep 14, 2015 9:57 am

extralean wrote:
tricours wrote:If not: 1.5 minutes of plank as a substitute


Weak. What happens when you're both so abdominally strong that this is not a challenge? Burpees; I nominate burpees.


This is unfair. Burpees are trivial after a decent level of aerobic conditioning, and tricours runs races and trains three times a week. She probably does burpees for breakfast.

I vote for 1RM deadlift.
0 x
: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book

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extralean
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby extralean » Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:34 am

soldeace wrote:
extralean wrote:
tricours wrote:If not: 1.5 minutes of plank as a substitute


Weak. What happens when you're both so abdominally strong that this is not a challenge? Burpees; I nominate burpees.


This is unfair. Burpees are trivial after a decent level of aerobic conditioning, and tricours runs races and trains three times a week. She probably does burpees for breakfast.

I vote for 1RM deadlift.


Sets of (at least) 5 are the only sets that count.
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: 53 / 52 53/52 Book Challenge. Reading: Ourania - J.M.G Le Clezio

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NIKOLIĆ
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby NIKOLIĆ » Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:52 am

extralean wrote:Sets of (at least) 5 are the only sets that count.


I don't like doing over 3 reps on deadlifts, except for my warm-up sets. Anything over 3 reps is conditioning work. :D
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How yes no.

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tricours
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:31 am

How about one-legged plank? Hardcore enough? :P

Well, I thought I'd outline the materials I'll use. It's pretty simple:

- Colloquial Polish
- Rozważna i romantyczna (whatever happened to the title in translation??), i.e. Sense and Sensibility, a simplified dual-language edition
+ lots of listening to Iza Lach and Mela Koteluk.

It's very tempting to just go for the passive bit and skip Colloquial Polish, because with my background, reading Polish (once I figured out how the spelling vs. sounds works) is pretty easy, but my active side is non-existent. And my spelling is horrible. So I try to do everything in Colloquial Polish, even if it's a bit boring.
0 x
: 18 / 18 Colloquial Polish :
: 2105 / 3000 Anki Cards :
: 3 / 10 Polish Books :
: 1 / 28 Polish in 4 Weeks :

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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Sep 14, 2015 12:08 pm

NIKOLIĆ wrote:I don't like doing over 3 reps on deadlifts, except for my warm-up sets. Anything over 3 reps is conditioning work. :D


This made me think of a martial arts instructor who once told my senior that "Anything less than two hours of training per day is a hobby.".
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby Serpent » Mon Sep 14, 2015 2:05 pm

tricours wrote:- Rozważna i romantyczna (whatever happened to the title in translation??), i.e. Sense and Sensibility, a simplified dual-language edition
+ lots of listening to Iza Lach and Mela Koteluk.

It's very tempting to just go for the passive bit and skip Colloquial Polish, because with my background, reading Polish (once I figured out how the spelling vs. sounds works) is pretty easy, but my active side is non-existent. And my spelling is horrible. So I try to do everything in Colloquial Polish, even if it's a bit boring.

They kept the style of the title :-)

Is it music? :)

What kind of background do you have? textbooks are indeed boring if you can already understand native materials :? You might like some ideas here.
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Corrections welcome

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tricours
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:25 pm

Serpent wrote:Is it music? :)


Yep! Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_lA6hV1Ag or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7O7IIKZxRs! (How does the youtube link thing here work? The preview just gave me a white square when I tried with the title of the video.)

Serpent wrote:What kind of background do you have? textbooks are indeed boring if you can already understand native materials :? You might like some ideas here.


I know Russian and I have a somewhat good grasp of Ukrainian (passive mostly), I've got a master's degree in Old Church Slavonic, and I've dabbled in Bulgarian (mostly reading literature). So this all helps. But only with the passive part.
1 x
: 18 / 18 Colloquial Polish :
: 2105 / 3000 Anki Cards :
: 3 / 10 Polish Books :
: 1 / 28 Polish in 4 Weeks :

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soldeace
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby soldeace » Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:43 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
NIKOLIĆ wrote:I don't like doing over 3 reps on deadlifts, except for my warm-up sets. Anything over 3 reps is conditioning work. :D


This made me think of a martial arts instructor who once told my senior that "Anything less than two hours of training per day is a hobby.".


My former kungfu teacher used to put us into a 100-rep regimen for bodyweight squats, push-ups, lying leg raises, and endless circuits of isometric stances -- because screw modern Physiology! THIS is how 300-year-old taoist monks bulk :roll:

Now back to the main subject ;)

"Why should anyone learn Swedish"? That's something I hear quite often. Specifically in my case, though, the reasons are plenty and completely justified. Firstly, vikings. That's reason enough to shove all Scandinavian languages into the basic grade worldwide. Secondly, I love Germanic languages (of any sort) and Swedish seemed just the right choice in terms of difficulty and probability of use. Brazil has quite solid technological agreements with Sweden (mainly in my field of work), and you never know when opportunity will slam your door open and ask you to show off your skills 8-) And lastly, vikings, I think.

I intend to attack Swedish with a spaced repetition method first. Swedish grammar is substantial, but absurdly smoother and logical than German (which I had a not-so-fortunate experience in the past). I feel this is the perfect opportunity to try out Duolingo and its revamped interface. Duolingo works with adaptative spaced repetition for both writing, reading, listening and speaking (depending on the language). It has become almost a different platform since the first time I used it years ago, and it's been working great so far, though the Swedish text-to-speech engine sounds like a red-eyed female Terminator.

I'm also putting a lot of effort into translating metal songs with Swedish lyrics, being Finntroll (a Swedish-speaking Finnish band) my favorite group so far. Oh, and I've become in love with Tomas Tranströmer's poetry, whose focus lies in a bucolic themes. I'm trying to interpret and translate them too.

There's a game available on Steam named "Influent". It puts you in a typical college student's home where you have to tag and guess the name of every object. I was skeptical at first, but just a few rounds in this game and words got magically stuck in my brain. I believe I'm going to explore it further, though I have very little time at home.

I have some serious ebooks in Swedish here, but I'm giving it some time until I get a better grasp of the language. Meanwhile, I'm reading that totally awesome children's book with dinosaurs and stuff.
3 x
: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book


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