Sillygoose1's Language Extraordinaire

[sillygoose1]

How was El Bar? I was hoping to see a late-night screening of it at a film festival a few months ago which sounded great fun, but it was all sold out. I loved El día de la bestia, so silly.

Really good. People who took it at face value as an apocalypse movie seemed disappointed, but without potential spoilers I think there's a good message in there in regards to society with each character representing an attribute that is well known in every city. de la Iglesia never disappoints.

Are you going to be watching the new Suburra series?

[sillygoose1]

French & Italian:

Double update since I'm doing the same exact thing and will be doing it again for my other languages in the very near future.

Besides casual podcast listening of Les Grandes Gueules, C dans l'air, Quotidien, and La Zanzara I've taken the focus off of book vocab and movie/TV maintenance for the moment.

I can read any given book with relatively high speed and even after my problems with Italian that made me give up for a while I just finished a book on WWI in like two days. My real vocabulary gaps are tools, household items, bathroom items, car, clothes, animals, and some foods. Up until now I've focused only on slang, dialects, and literary vocabulary and I've gravely neglected everyday items. I've neglected media that I deemed too easy because I put way too much importance on making out words in speech without realizing I could write a poem or essay with more ease than live in the French or Italian countryside for a week. I put so much focus on what I thought was the most important without realizing that the media I deemed too easy ie Cooking shows, podcasts, reality shows have the most casual speech that would help me better communicate with others without having to stoop to describing items. Up until yesterday I realized I didn't even know how to say paper towels. I always assumed it was just "papier de cuisine" but it's either "essuie-tout" or "papier absorbant". I didn't know the name of some tools and utensils like "sander" (ponceuse), "flakes" (I always just assumed it was morceaux or pepites, it's "copeaux" for shavings), food processor (robot menager), drying rack (egouttoir).

So what I've been doing is just browsing Amazon for hours on end to start. I've been reading reviews, looking up items, reading their descriptions. I've been going in the Office supplies, Bathroom appliances, Kitchen appliances, Back to school, Clothes, Car, everything. Learning how to better describe, learning more specific vocabulary. A lot of them I remember but they obviously fell out of use and got forgotten. I learned how to better word things. I shouldn't say learned because I'm still doing it. I just learned paper clip (trombone) which I always thought I could get by with "epingle" or "pince". But I don't want to just get by, I want native skills.

Besides Amazon, I've been looking up supermarkets in France and Italy and just browsing their sections learning food and everyday items. I've also been using Wordreference lists to learn really niche vocab like animal sounds. Although most of them I remember reading in fairy tales, there were still some I didn't know.

It really says a lot when I can understand and keep up with a show like Braquo, watch movies, or watch Dieudonne without much problems but that before yesterday I probably would be in trouble living the everyday life.

So my plan of action is to keep doing that. Just getting familiar with everything. When I go to a grocery store I'm going to quiz myself and keep a list of what I don't know then practice it online. I'm also going to start watching cooking shows and other shows with more casual conversations. I'm going to try to browse Amazon and market sites once a month for a few hours until everything is set in my head. My next language to go through this will be Spanish then German. Russian still has a ways to go.


German:

Series:

Finished Hadafing
Episode 1 Season 4 Der Tatortreiniger

Books:

More Verwirrungen..Torless..


Russian:

Series:

The Sniffer - season 1 done

[sillygoose1]

I forget why I made another thread but I'm going to use this one again since it's easier to find in my post history.

Russian:

Reading The Death of Ivan Illich. It's going slow even though it's a novella. Kind of lost. Getting confused sometimes between the singular instrumental and prepositional. Soft/hard ending declensions are a little iffy but I can distinguish the case according to the sentence. My vocabulary is incredibly weak and so it's hard to learn words from context. After this, I'm going to read Solzhenitsyn's collection of short stories then Bulgakov's Ivan Vasilyevich. So before I start jumping into Dostoevsky's oeuvre, Gulag Archipelago, and Anna Karenina I obviously have quite a bit of work to do.

I've been watching season 2 of Catherine the Great with English subs after struggling to watch the Sniffer with Russian subs. Not sure if it's helping or not. I don't think it is and I hate using non-TL subs even when I try not to look at them. Might have to find a Spongebob dub or something since that's the only children's show I can stand watching.




Almost positive that the language bug bit me again. I gathered materials for Arabic, Mandarin, Ancient Greek, Japanese, and Persian. I don't have any particular goals besides learning the UN languages + German to a high level. I'm perfectly content flirting with the others at the moment although Japanese and Persian have been on my backburner for years. I'm nervous when I get too excited about learning new languages because then I try learning them all at once and burnout for a year or so. Yeah, that still happens to the best of us even after almost a decade of being in the game.

[DaveAgain]

I've been watching season 2 of Catherine the Great with English subs after struggling to watch the Sniffer with Russian subs. Not sure if it's helping or not. I don't think it is and I hate using non-TL subs even when I try not to look at them. Might have to find a Spongebob dub or something since that's the only children's show I can stand watching.

Perhaps it would help to read a biography of her, and then watch the series again? Henri Troyat's gets good reviews.

PS
Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has Catherine the Great's face!

[sillygoose1]

I've been watching season 2 of Catherine the Great with English subs after struggling to watch the Sniffer with Russian subs. Not sure if it's helping or not. I don't think it is and I hate using non-TL subs even when I try not to look at them. Might have to find a Spongebob dub or something since that's the only children's show I can stand watching.

Perhaps it would help to read a biography of her, and then watch the series again? Henri Troyat's gets good reviews.

PS
Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has Catherine the Great's face!

I can get the main ideas with the English subs, the problem is just that I'm not strong enough in the language yet to not rely on subs. The show is actually serving well as a sort of biography. Maybe she's more well known in Europe, but I'm American and had no idea who she even was let alone that she was part of the Romanov dynasty. The link between Peter and Frederick the Great was eye opening though which was covered. The second season is dealing more with the Russo-Ottoman war of the time so I'm excited to learn how that plays out. And that's funny with Cameron! Come to think of it, it does make sense given their Germanic roots. haha

[sillygoose1]

French:

Watched an episode of Engrenages season 6. This show seems to be sort of my measurement of French skills over the years. When I first started learning there were only 3 seasons out. With each new season that came out since with a gap of 2-3 years each, I've been able to understand everything better and follow the details more and more. It's satisfying seeing my progress like that.

I think something that we take for granted in our native languages as far as oral comprehension goes is how if the sound quality is bad for example, we can usually fill in the blanks with what would have been said if we missed something. But even in our native language we don't realize how many words we actually miss at times that we can't necessarily "hear" or if we can't fill in the blank at the moment, how much we just fill it in ourselves whether it was the right word or not. I think when you can start doing that with your TL then you have made some serious progress.

German:

Reading Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften by Robert Musil. It's an opus, that's for sure. So what's going on now is that when I try to read fluently, the meanings of certain words still aren't automatic and my mind blocks them out sometimes. This happens especially with unknown words relying on context clues. My hope is that by the end of this work, I will have improved quite a lot. I've tried a few audiobooks and haven't noticed much improvement yet.

I've also watched season 2 of You are Wanted. I understand the main plot points with a good amount of details compared to the first season which was just last year.


Italian:

Watched Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot. Good movie, but my Romanesco is still subpar. Some dialogues were difficult to understand at times but ironically, I understand the Neapolitan dialogues better. Whether this has to do with my upbringing and hearing it frequently or not I'm not sure. I've seen a lot of media where the speakers spoke with a thick Neapolitan accent, but I've also seen some from Sicily and the most from Rome and the latter two still pose problems at times.


Russian:

Finished The Death of Ivan Illich. Didn't get anything out of it, really. It was a struggle to stay concentrated. Finishing up the second season of Ekaterina with English subs. I can pick out a few words here and there but nothing else is really happenings.

[sillygoose1]

French:

Engrenages season 6 - done. Learned some new legal terms and expressions. Was kinda hard to hear because blu ray has this weird echo playback but I understood the details, names, everything.


Spanish:

Finished La catedral del mar. I already said it, but ever since I saw Mar de plastico a few years ago then La casa de papel, Spain is producing some of the best television right now and no one is even aware of it it seems. Anyone on the fence of learning Spanish, I'd say go for it just for the TV right now. Quality series just keep pouring out.


German:

Read the first part of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. I can finally read fluently now it seems. Finished Jerks season 1 (funnier than I expected) with relative ease.


Italian:

The Generi. Really funny TV show that makes fun of popular movie tropes. The second episode was the funniest thing I've laughed at in foreign language media since La que se avecina and Antonio Recio and I still have the rest of the season to go.


Russian:

Watched Solaris. Not really going to do anything besides watch a few movies or shows until I finish reading Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

[sillygoose1]

Russian:

Watched an episode of The Road to Calvary w/ Russian subs. Didn't go so hot. Looking to rush through this series then binge Tarkovsky's filmography. The aspects are pretty much drilled in. The prefixes are causing problems still at times - even adding one like "за" to a verb sometimes only changes its meaning from normal to idiomatic apparently. I've been mulling over the idea of going through Perfectionnement Russe again but I'm not sure if it would benefit me since I already did it twice when I could just use that time on native materials.


Arabic:

Learned the alphabet, lesson 12 Arabic with Ease. Can't say much right now, but we'll see later on


Chinese:

Lesson 19 Chinese with Ease, Unit 4 "Chinese Characters: Learn & Remember 2, 178 Characters and Their Meanings"


I decided to start Arabic and Chinese because my language goals for my lifetime are to learn the six UN languages and the main ancient languages (Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Sanskrit). I needed something new anyway. I see myself starting Japanese again soon also. I've started learning Python, Java, and C++ as well but I won't list those here.

[MamaPata]

Haha, we have the same goal, except for that whole business of all of the ancient languages. I'll leave those to you! My chances of managing the UN ones are questionable enough!

[sillygoose1]

Haha, we have the same goal, except for that whole business of all of the ancient languages. I'll leave those to you! My chances of managing the UN ones are questionable enough!

That's awesome! We both have some Latin experience as well it seems. I assume you're going to restart your Arabic one day - any particular dialect you're aiming for? I wonder if other people here are aiming for all six because that would make for a fun group.