Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

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

Postby Elenia » Wed Nov 25, 2015 9:34 pm

I've listened to so many youtube DIY videos in Swedish. I reinforced lots of food vocabulary, and learnt some health words. I wanted something very lighthearted and good for 'easy listening'. I'm also still slowly catching up on the push ups I owe!
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tricours
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Sat Nov 28, 2015 2:54 pm

Yesterday I lost a bit of motivation and didn't watch the entire episode, so i compensated with 15+5 push-ups. Today, we'll see...

I started doing Duolingo for German! Please add me if you use it too.
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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 » Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:32 pm

I feel sad for being so absent in this event... Unluckily, I got flooded with requests both at work and university, precisely after I got all yippie with my Swedish studies. The timing was horrible when I decided to try a language challenge, and have a chance at last to beat tricours at something. The next time I accept a challenge in this fashion, I'll make double-sure it's quick, like a street basketball match, or rock-paper-scissors -- and unrelated to language learning, for she's an unstoppable machine at it.

But I got pretty thrilled to see people interested in the challenge. My absence brought something good after all, I think! My warm welcome to the newcomers Elenia and WalkingAlone13! Go Swedish team!! Let's overthrow this challenge's king (queen)-of-the-hill and her petty Polish lessons full of consonants! :D

The good news is that I have been doing 3rd month's homework without knowing it :D I had been listening to Klartext news on my phone almost everyday, since listening to stuff while in transit was the only thing I could do last month. I can't get much of what the hosts say, unless they pronounce it so slowly it feels embarrassing. But it's getting better. Oh, it's worth mentioning I was watching a French movie the other day ("La Délicatesse"), and I could understand what the Swedish character's family shouted at him in a scene. It feels good to have that "I KNOW WHAT THEY'RE SAYING!" under unexpected contexts :)

And to not let this post pass without illustrations of any sort, and for the amusement of all, here's one of my whales going nova in an explosive, colorful Fourier Transform.

Image
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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 » Sat Nov 28, 2015 5:51 pm

@Soldeace - hello! Thanks for the welcome :) thanks to an incredible lack of structure, I can't really say what helped drag my Swedish listening comprehension up, but dragged up it was. I think that the three things that really helped were Lingq, FSI and intensive work on Solsidan (available on TV4 with Sv subs, but you do have to be a premium member. They do offer a month of free premium, but you might want to hold off on it). My 'method' mainly involved intensive transcript study, and watching the same episodes over and over again. Not everyone can stomach that, and it's a massive pain to begin with, but I've now got a listening ability that is above ALL my other skills by a full level, according to a diagnostic test I took a little while ago. Every now an again I get hit by the shock that I can actually understand this language, and it's great :D
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soldeace
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby soldeace » Sat Nov 28, 2015 8:06 pm

Elenia wrote:@Soldeace - hello! Thanks for the welcome :) thanks to an incredible lack of structure, I can't really say what helped drag my Swedish listening comprehension up, but dragged up it was. I think that the three things that really helped were Lingq, FSI and intensive work on Solsidan (available on TV4 with Sv subs, but you do have to be a premium member. They do offer a month of free premium, but you might want to hold off on it). My 'method' mainly involved intensive transcript study, and watching the same episodes over and over again. Not everyone can stomach that, and it's a massive pain to begin with, but I've now got a listening ability that is above ALL my other skills by a full level, according to a diagnostic test I took a little while ago. Every now an again I get hit by the shock that I can actually understand this language, and it's great :D


That's an awesome method indeed! I did something similar in the past with German. I listened to the "Warum Nicht?" modules over and over, until I got all the words right on paper. Thanks for the tips, I'm gonna try it with Swedish this month :)
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: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book

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tricours
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby tricours » Wed Dec 02, 2015 12:00 pm

Well, I've done no listening for the last two days so I need to do some push-ups. To my defense I was on a business trip (in Sweden) with very little alone time. I found quite a lot of Polish audio books on Audible actually, and very cheap ones at that, so I'll try to listen to 20 minutes of one and see how much I understand.

I just realized that the new "Christmas calendar" (julkalendern) has started in Sweden, "Tusen år till julafton", that presents Christmas traditions in Sweden throughout 1000 years! (I think that's the idea at least, I missed the first episode). The episodes usually last 20 minutes, and this year it is apparently more informative, less childish (to the great despair of parents) and perhaps mostly suitable for intelligent adults. Not sure how foreigners can access them though, if http://www.svtplay.se/ works outside of Scandinavia. The episodes are bound to show up on Youtube sometime though.

Oh, and how was the trip to Sweden, Elenia? What did you do?
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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 » Wed Dec 02, 2015 2:41 pm

Thanks for the warm welcome, Soldeace! I think you and Elenia will probably win this month, as I have now also missed a few days now.
I am not entirely sure what the deal is with my university but they have seemingly planned it so that I now have one, or in most cases, two assignments due every Wednesday starting from two weeks back. I have managed to still fit in my language stuff but I've had to improvise a little, and well, I did miss three days of Swedish in total. I have done variations of push-ups for one of those three days and will do the others shortly. Well, after my chocolate has gone down that is. It's a hard life being this healthy!

It wasn't feasible to keep up with my Pimsleur whilst being so busy as I don't like spreading one lesson over a day, so I mostly watched Moomins. I also tried to mix it up a little with some Swedish music but to my dismay, was not able to find anything really. It's a little ironic as two of my favourite bands are Swedish...just they only ever sing in English.
I don't suppose any of you guys know of any Swedish pop rock or similar? The only thing that seems to come up on youtube is Siri Nilsen and well, to say I cringed at a few lyrics would probably be an understatement.

Which reminds me, actually, Elenia, here's what I'm currently listening to for German, if interested. :)
Eisblume
Christina Stuermer
Juli
Silbermond
Luxuslaerm
We butter the bread with butter

Mostly 1 and 4 on the list though, both are very nice for lyrics in my opinion. You probably know of them all, but if not it's possibly something different to check out. :)

It's quite fun watching the Moomins again. I watched them every morning in Finland, which often meant sometimes I'd watch in Swedish and sometimes in Finnish, so it's quite interesting watching again from the beginning purely in Swedish this time. Plus by searching for the Moomins I inadvertently discovered that the original series of the TMNT is available on youtube in Finnish. Weird but kinda cool. I am thinking about which series to watch in Swedish after the Moomins now, not entirely sure but if I can find some over cartoon with a lot of episodes I'd be pretty pleased.
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Elenia
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby Elenia » Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:45 am

Well, looks like soldeace is grinding all of our noses in the dirt, because I also missed two days of proper listening. I've done ten of the forty push ups I owe - I think you'll all be very interested to know that in the time since I've joined this challenge, the amount of push ups I can do at once has tripled*.

@tricours - the trip was great, the only problem was that it was way too short. I even managed to speak some Swedish, and I drank a lot o julmust. You say non-Swedes typically don't like it? Then it's official: I'm Swedish. :D

@WalkingAlone13 - University always gets super intense around November, so well done for keeping on! As for music, I mostly just listen to Loke Nyberg. In actual fact, I mostly just listen to/live/breathe Kaizers Orchestra, but that helps no one here. If you have Spotify and don't mind incorporating Skånsk into your aural diet, you might want to check out Rå Epok's Spotify playlist. I have a grudge against Spotify, and so I haven't gone through the playlist myself, but you might find something you enjoy there :)
Also, thank you for the list! I have only heard of Silbermond, and We butter the bread with butter (which I heard about on your log), so thank you :)

*That sounds impressive until I say that the max amount of push ups I can do before falling flat on my face is three :oops:
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Elenia
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby Elenia » Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:49 am

Elenia wrote:Well, looks like soldeace is grinding all of our noses in the dirt, because I also missed two days of proper listening. I've done ten of the forty push ups I owe - I think you'll all be very interested to know that in the time since I've joined this challenge, the amount of push ups I can do at once has tripled*.

@tricours - the trip was great, the only problem was that it was way too short. I even managed to speak some Swedish, and I drank a lot o julmust. You say non-Swedes typically don't like it? Then it's official: I'm Swedish. :D

@WalkingAlone13 - University always gets super intense around November, so well done for keeping on! As for music, I mostly just listen to Loke Nyberg. In actual fact, I mostly just listen to/live/breathe Kaizers Orchestra, but that helps no one here. If you have Spotify and don't mind incorporating Skånsk into your aural diet, you might want to check out Rå Epok's Spotify playlist. I have a grudge against Spotify, and so I haven't gone through the playlist myself, but you might find something you enjoy there :)
Also, thank you for the list! I have only heard of Silbermond, and We butter the bread with butter (which I heard about on your log), so thank you :)

*That sounds impressive until I say that the max amount of push ups I can do before falling flat on my face is three :oops:


EDIT: Tack för tipset om Julkalendern, tricours! I have just checked, and I believe I'll be able to watch it in England.

EDIT v.2.0: Wish I could tell the difference between the 'quote' button and the 'edit' button...
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soldeace
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Re: Month by Month Swedish/Polish challenge

Postby soldeace » Fri Dec 04, 2015 12:26 am

@Elenia
Nope, not grinding anyone here. Things got weird at work and people started to ask for urgent reports (which reads "someone didn't do her task in due time and shit hit the fan now that the year is nearly over"). But I'm micro-managing my time and I fitted in audio sessions here and there. I'm clearing 20 minutes of duolingo sessions per day (which counts as listening too, right?). By the way, WalkingAlone13 added me there. If you have an account, feel free to add me as well :)

@WalkingAlone13
I'm not well versed in the art of pop music, but if you're into folk stuff, there's Garmarna. They are AWESOME and most of their lyrics are quite... folk-ish. Which sometimes translates to "simple enough for anyone to understand". I like them a lot, all of their songs, along with Poeta Magica (check out their album "Raben Runen Raukar" on Spotify, my favorite!).

I'm going to stay in bed for the whole week from next Monday, and I intend to get through it with audiobooks. I'm going to seek children's stories this weekend and post them here if I succeed.
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: 11 / 20 Duolingo (Swedish)
: 3 / 17 Colloquial Swedish book


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