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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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Fri Dec 04, 2015 6:48 am

Annoyingly, I keep finding Swedish things I want to listen to, not Polish, which is a bit pointless...

Well! The day before yesterday I tried listening to Bez pożegnania, which I bought on Audible. Fell asleep. Went at it again yesterday but with the text in front of me, which helps a ton. I discovered Googles "My Books" thingie (which I'm extremely confused as to how to access, I have to Google it every time and it pops up, but it's not inside my Gmail menu...) is pretty practical because

1) it can actually handle Polish letters
2) it is integrated with Google translate
3) it can read your text out loud and it doesn't sound half bad

I first discovered it when I downloaded a sample of the ebook Bez pożegnania and my Samsung pad wanted to open it in My Books/My Library. So now I'm considering buying the entire ebook... but Polish ebooks are so expensive! They cost as much as print books!

Also, I'm not sure this is my kind of book. It's a family saga thing, lots of love and family and all those things I hate. It's the author herself who reads it, and she reads suuuuper slowly though, so that's positive.

To make up for one of my missed days, I did 20 push-ups yesterday.

I'm a big confused about Duolingo. I missed a couple of days, and when I went back, some of the bars had receded one step. When I redid those lessons, they had lots of new words never previously introduced. Is this normal?

OH! I finished Wszystko dla niej! :D How could I forget that?
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: 18 / 18 Colloquial Polish :
: 2105 / 3000 Anki Cards :
: 3 / 10 Polish Books :
: 1 / 28 Polish in 4 Weeks :

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WalkingAlone13
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby WalkingAlone13 » Fri Dec 04, 2015 5:58 pm

"I'm a big confused about Duolingo. I missed a couple of days, and when I went back, some of the bars had receded one step. When I redid those lessons, they had lots of new words never previously introduced. Is this normal?"

This usually happens if you review it via the option to the right of the screen rather than clicking on the individual category and redoing them that way. It's still not usually too bad, just it means (At least I think so) that it can review any words you've done so far, including those of lessons lit up but not yet started. So, for example, if you have science 2/5 those three that are yet to be finished for science could also come up in the review :)
I don't think it happens if you redo them one by one by clicking on them and strengthening them that way, so that might be better if it gets too annoying. I usually do one at a time unless I'm in a hurry and then I'll do the right of the screen option to save time.

I actually found time for some more Pimsleur so took advantage of it and did three lessons. Yay. I also watched Huset Anubis on youtube, I don't really know what it is I just watched it as an episode lasts 10 minutes, but they were uploaded as two episodes per video. And, it appears to have something like 6 seasons. So if by chance it happens to be good, that's quite a lot of viewing material. I can't really tell what it's about from the first episode, other then it's set in an unusual school.

Thanks for the recommendations, Soldeace! I'll hopefully listen to some later and hope that I like it :) I don't usually listen to much pop rock in English, but for some reason, in foreign languages I usually quite like it. If I could set out a collection similar to the one I have for German I'd be set for sure.

Also, for anyone interested, I purchased Ice Age A Mammoth Christmas for £3 from Tesco after discovering it has audio for the following languages;
English
Danish
Finnish
French
German
Norwegian
and of course, Swedish :)

It also has subs for most of the languages it has audio for. But yeah, three quid. Can't really complain, even if it's just 24 minutes long : P
This one is probably only of use to Elenia, but you can also buy the Frozen short for £2 from Tesco which has German audio and English. Same with Mickey's Once upon a Christmas which is on for 63 minutes :)

And yes, you guessed right. I clearly hate Christmas. : P
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soldeace
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby soldeace » Fri Dec 04, 2015 11:30 pm

Not playing the little devil on your shoulder, but if anyone here needs assistance with bodyweight exercises (in case you stray from your language learning path), there's /r/bodyweightfitness on reddit with good programs, instructional videos and a lot of people eager to help (including some calisthenics celebrities).

;)
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: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book

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Elenia
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby Elenia » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:04 pm

Wow, thanks for the tip, WalkingAlone13! I listened to an episode of Huset Anubis yesterday... not quite sure how I feel about it. The lip-synch for the dub is a little painful, at times. I don't know if you know already, but there is a German remake of the series.

I got yesterday's listening in, somehow, thanks to all of your reccommendations. Tack så mycket! I spent most of the day out, and forgot my headphones as I planned to watch Huset Anubis on the train. So I had to wait until I got home to squeeze everything in. I also watched an episode of Julkalandern. Quite interesting, with a good range of different voices. Today, I think I'll go for some 'På Spåret'. I might also try to listen to På Minuten once again, as a sort of diagnostics test. Last time I tried, I didn't get very much...

@Soldeace - I listened to a couple of songs by Garmarna. For some reason, Euchari put me in mind of a Kent song, although I can't say why.
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tricours
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:43 pm

I almost managed 20 minutes on Saturday, but since I didn't quite finish my listening, I did my 20 push ups. I was going to do another set of 20 yesterday because I did NOTHING yesterday, but my brutally sore abdominal muscles put an end to that idea after one push up.

Instead of continuing with Bez pożegnania, I got the ebook and audiobook for Pożegnanie z Marią, which was on my to-read list anyway. I'm reading the epub through Readlang and listening to the audio book on a very nice audio book app that seems to exist for Swedish and Polish in particular - Audioteka. Not sure how good an idea this book was though, it seems quite difficult... Lots of descriptions of shadows and stuff. Will try to do better today. I definitely have to read the text first, then listen. Otherwise I understand like 10%.
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: 18 / 18 Colloquial Polish :
: 2105 / 3000 Anki Cards :
: 3 / 10 Polish Books :
: 1 / 28 Polish in 4 Weeks :

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Elenia
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby Elenia » Tue Dec 08, 2015 7:34 pm

@tricours - I found the way to get most out of parallel text and audio for me was to listen to and read the text a few times in different combination. I LR with German, where my comprehension is hovering somewhere just a little above ground level, and with a text in a language I can understand when possible. It helped me understand a lot more than I otherwise would have done. I'll shamelessly quote myself from my log here:

Past Me wrote:... for a harder book such as Der kleine Hobbit, I prefer to have read through the chapter first in English with or without audio. Listening along with audio means that when reading the German it is easier to remember the meaning of the words. For something slightly easier, like Tintenherz I like to read through in German first without audio, then read in English with German audio, then in German again with German audio.


---

After my grand plans, I completely forgot to do any listening until yesterday was over. The good news is that I can now reliably do 5 push ups in one go, which hopefully means I'll get through the obscene amount of push ups I've accrued sooner rather than later.

Today, I listened to roughly an episode and a half's worth of På spåret, and another episode of Julkalandern.
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tricours
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:15 am

@WalkingAlone13 Actually, I am doing it the way you suggest - yet unknown stuff pop up!

I went back to Bez pożegnania... I got so annoyed with Pożegnanie z Marią because I could read a page and really have no idea if anything happened or if it was just a collection of words. In Bez pożegnania I only have to look up a couple of words here and there and understand the events fully as long as I read along with the audio. Plus, WW2 entered the stage, and that always catches my interest!

@Elenia, I don't think I have the patience to re-read things, unfortunately :/ I read once and that's it.
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: 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 » Fri Dec 11, 2015 10:50 pm

I'm lying on my bed until god-knows-when, so I decided to go full throttle: since Monday, I've been doing 3-4 lessons on duolingo everyday, 100 cards on Anki, reading as much as I can, and writing rubbish in a notepad (whatever comes in mind). I'm also listening to the 15 minutes of Klartext daily broadcast, plus random videos on YouTube in Swedish. I found out dubbed shows are nonexistent in Swedish except those made specifically for children (yay for Disney musicals! :D)
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: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book

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soldeace
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby soldeace » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:15 pm

Still in bed, I've caught up with last month's Klartext. I also listened to a fair share of 8sidor's machine-spoken audio, despite its voice being unbearable after a while. So I'm going after other Sveriges Radio programs for something slightly more hardcore and human narrated.

And speaking of annoying TTS voices, I've just found out yandex.ru's has a Swedish voice API which is FABULOUS. Sounds much more natural and clearer than Google's. I've replaced all my Anki cards audio and couldn't be more satisfied.

PS: If you have Anki as your favorite spaced repetition program, I suggest AwesomeTTS addon to generate and download pronunciation for your cards. More info: http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning. ... n.html?m=1
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: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book

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Elenia
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby Elenia » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:31 pm

soldeace wrote:PS: If you have Anki as your favorite spaced repetition program, I suggest AwesomeTTS addon to generate and download pronunciation for your cards. More info: http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning. ... n.html?m=1


I think I only have two cards with audio (my anki deck doesn't see much use) but I used forvo for the audio. Real Human audio is great :D and you can request recordings, too. They also show you where the speaker is from, which is great for targeting an accent.
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