Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[rdearman]

Well it is official. My polyglot has polyrot. Spoke with a French person tonight and I swear my French is getting worse and worse (if that is even possible) and my pronunciation terrible. To the point she couldn't even understand me some of the time. Of course, it didn't help that we were doing a little mini-challenge. Sometimes with this person we try to push the boat out a little and work harder. I had previously discussed how she had me describe how an airplane flew. Tonight we randomly selected pictures and had to describe them. Some of the pictures were:

• Photo of a woman at CosPlay dressed as the Jokers GF (from the batman film)
• Two kids jumping on a trampoline
• A Llama in the mountains
• Man in 3 piece suit
• Woman in cocktail dress
• Three women walking along drinking coffee
• Old man smoking a cigar
• Bird watcher in camouflage
• Drunken frog on a bench (Kermit)

The exercise isn't just to describe what they are wearing, the scene and descriptive nouns, you also have to say if you think they are happy, sad, angry, etc. and you have to say why they are like that. For example, why is the man dressed in a suit? Where is he going? What is his job? Why isn't he wearing socks?

Now the lady I was speaking to did an amazing job in English, very few problems, not a lot of pronunciation issues (other than the ever present issue with the H at the start of a word). But I was crap. I seemed to have forgotten basic stuff! Some of the basic stuff I'd forgotten?

• elle s'est déguisée
• le visage
• des gants
• crampons (to be fair, I'm not 100% sure I ever learned this word for "cleats")
• aller-retour
• un serre-tête
• un arbuste ; des buissons
• il s'est déguisé en buisson

These types of exchanges really point out the huge gaps in my abilities, especially for sentence construction "on the fly". Let's take "elle s'est déguisée" or roughly something like "she is dressed as a ..." the problem was I knew all the words but couldn't seem to get them in the right order. I knew I needed to use something reflexive, but this thought seemed to give me brain freeze. I could not think of how to make the sentence reflexive. I completely forgotten the silly little "s' " which needed to go before est. Nothing would drag this little word up from the depths of my mind. Then the "Oh damn" hits you when it is spelled out for you. I wonder how I can just lose entire words, even little one letter ones.

Then after that one bit of buggery it goes down hill from there. My confidence falters, the pronunciation returns to mush-mouth Frenglish pronunciation. I have an Italian and a French exchange scheduled for tomorrow so hopefully they will be better. The French one is with another person I've mentioned before who mostly sticks to French regardless of how much I encourage her to speak English. Most likely it will be a solid hour of French.

I'm going to try and push the boat out with a mini-challenge with the Italian person and see how I get on.

[Brun Ugle]

I have that problem all the time, even in Norwegian, in which I was certified C1 back in 2003. I have the problem to some extent, even in English. Sometimes I think I must have Alzheimer’s or something. Or maybe it’s just autism. But as soon as I get a little tired, stressed or ill, the speaking part of my brain seems to turn off. It’s really horrible to suddenly forget a language you know fairly well. And in all languages, I need a warm-up before speaking if I’m going to speak reasonably well and not forget basic words or how to form a coherent sentence. Do you warm up before your language exchanges? I usually read aloud a little or watch a video in the language, then I do a recording of myself talking until I feel it starts to flow a little. Sometimes the flow never comes, but it’s still usually better after a warm-up than without it.

[rdearman]

Well 2 LE's down. The Italian lady I speak to had to pick up her friend and only had 30 minutes, so she made me speak in Italian and gave up her English time. This is something we've done before when if for some reason I am late I give up my time, or sometimes we split the difference. Anyway,, tonight she was in a car waiting for a friend she had to pickup and we just chatted for a little while and I didn't get a chance to push myself. I was generally OK and didn't have a problem with the conversation. We were not really stretching ourselves beyond basic chit-chat.

The second one, which I just completed was with the French lady who rarely attempts English. Today I managed to get 15 minutes out of her in English, so she is trying harder. The rest of the time was spent with me explaining my vacation plans next year and promising to visit as I drove past her house. Then we started talking about Japan (I was there for a couple of years) and why American dropped the atomic bombs. I have no idea how this topic came up, but not only did I have to dredge up my history lessons from school 40 years ago, I had to explain these ancient lessons in French. phew!

Do you warm up before your language exchanges?

Sometimes. If I can warm up I normally try. One problem with an exchange night like tonight is both romance languages one after the other. This normally causes me some issues. But tonight it wasn't so bad. Like you say, my skill ebbs and wanes and tonight it was OK. I did watch a short video on YouTube from Le Monde in French, but I did this before the Italian lesson. Then I had a 30 minute break between where I watched a short cooking show in Italian before my French exchange. There is a possibility I'm doing this wrong.

Another fun day at the new job though. A couple of Chinese collegues arrived from Shanghi and I managed to mutilate a little of their language too. But I only have 3-4 stock phrases to draw on in Mandarin at the moment, so the mutilation didn't last long.

[rdearman]

A quick update on another LE I had tonight. This one was little unplanned. Someone I haven't spoken to before wanted to speak with me. She was in Brighton and I though sure why not. Turns out she is attending a language school for English and has been learning English for a total of 1 month.

So she has some very basic English, and she does try but mostly the conversation was in Italian. She is very keen to speak weekly, which is fine by me, but I seem to have shifted from speaking to people who are probably C1/C2 in English to people who are A1/A2 in English. I am begining to understand why people were so happy to speak with me. They got lots of practice in the TL and I basically gave them an hour of practice.

I don't think it will take her long to pick up English, she is Brazilian, and taught herself Italian and Spanish. So she already knows how to learn a language. Seems she could get by in Spanish after only a few weeks, which makes sense I guess if you already know Portuguese and Italian.

[rdearman]

Tres Drole:

[rdearman]

Had a LE in French tonight and three more tomorrow Italian x2 and French. Today my LE partner is a lovely woman who I've been speaking to for best part of a year now. So tonight I asked if she saw any difference since we started speaking. She said:

je pense qu'avant tu me faisais plus répéter ou traduire quand je parlais en français. cela veut dire que tu comprends mieux aujourd'hui (roughly: I think before you made me do more repetition or translate when I spoke French. it means that you understand better today)

So that is encouraging. I think it is true that my comprehension has gone up, although tonight I didn't think it was particulary good, but it goes up and down. I noticed last night while watching a mini-series in Italian which I've watched before that I could follow the conversation not because of the actions on screen, but because I understood most of the words they were using. So I think things are improving a little.

Having read Expug's log RE: Clozemaster I think I need to pick this back up again for all my languages and just vow to do 10-15 minutes each per day until it has become a habit. Might be easier said than done though.

[Beli Tsar]

Good to hear about your recent progress! And your language exchange schedule is impressive.

Having read Expug's log RE: Clozemaster I think I need to pick this back up again for all my languages and just vow to do 10-15 minutes each per day until it has become a habit. Might be easier said than done though.

This makes sense, especially seeing the improvements Expug has been posting about recently, but it would be interesting to hear a bit more about what you are hoping for from it. What areas are you hoping it will improve? What deficiencies in your learning will it help with?

[rdearman]

Good to hear about your recent progress! And your language exchange schedule is impressive.

Having read Expug's log RE: Clozemaster I think I need to pick this back up again for all my languages and just vow to do 10-15 minutes each per day until it has become a habit. Might be easier said than done though.

This makes sense, especially seeing the improvements Expug has been posting about recently, but it would be interesting to hear a bit more about what you are hoping for from it. What areas are you hoping it will improve? What deficiencies in your learning will it help with?

I have a couple of problems which aren't really being tackled at the moment. Grammar and Additional Vocabulary. I'm thinking that the text input (Cloze Sentences) would help me build vocabulary and the grammar exercises will help with sentence construction. My weakest skill in both languages is writing. So I know the word, but couldn't spell it to save my life, although Italian is easier in this regard. Before I started my current job I used clozemaster a lot for Mandarin and my written Mandarin vocabulary was improving quite a bit. I was also doing Scriptorium exercises where I was copying a Chinese fiction book onto paper. This was really helping with the character memorization. I don't really have a lot of time to pick this all back up, but I do have the odd 15-20 minutes to spend on Clozemaster in all three languages (Italian, French, Mandarin) so cycling through these would (in theory) boost my vocabulary acquisition and sentence construct knowledge.

So in a nutshell, more vocabulary, improved orthography, better grammatical structure.

[rdearman]

Okay I have arrived in Bratislava. Getting ready for the polyglot Gathering. I haven't spoken to any language except English since I got here, and I have forgotten any Slovakia or Czech the I might have ever learned in my life.

Dave should arrive soon at the small flat we've rented where the refrigerator is fully stocked with 6 eggs and a half a bottle of Jack Daniels. So that's all sorted for dinner.

Just a quick update on my last language Exchange. The lady I normally talk to who only ever speaks French I managed to work with her to get her to do some English. I had her do the exercise of describing pictures and I just kept sending her funny pictures. Which was great but the problem was she was laughing so hard I couldn't actually understand what she was saying in any language.

But it was a nice fun session and I got a lot of French practice in.

[rdearman]

OK another Bratislava update. It is pouring with rain here. And I have come completely unprepared for rain. Over the last three years I don't think it ever rained once while I was here so it was a bit unexpected. The hotel we're staying at is very weird with strangely sloping doors and paintings and it's very psychedelic hippie 60s thing.

As far as languages go it is mostly Slovakian as you would expect and therefore I don't speak much. One thing we have been doing is a little game between the three of us myself, Dave, and brun ugle. The game is that you have to approach someone and speak to them in one of your target languages. The others give you a score on how well you've done, how long you spoken for, and how much interaction you had with the other person. The top score is 2 points and if you said more than just hello then you got one point. You can get bonus points for things like getting more than five conversation started in a day. One extra rule we have added is if you get a slap then you get Five Points. Don't ask the reason for this last one but it makes sense to us.

The problem with this game of course is that I am losing. You might not realize this but there are not a significant amount of people who speak French or Italian in Bratislava when compared to either German or Slovakian which is what the other two are doing. Still I have managed to rack up a respectable Five Points, although I should have had seven. The two-point dispute was because I spoke Chinese to some lady but she didn't respond to me at all in any language, and ignored me completely. I thought I should have got a couple of points for the attempt but apparently no.

Tomorrow two more people join us one of whom speaks Italian, but apparently I don't get any extra points even if I speak to her all day long. Somehow I think the rules are rigged against me?

Stupidly I forgot to bring the large number of books that I was going to exchange, and left them sitting at home on a desk. So at some point in the future I will have a lot of books to exchange.

I have been looking at the program for my presentation, and I am following Richard Simcott. I don't understand why anyone thought I was a good choice to follow Richard simcott. Although it is on the first morning and I will be done with it quickly and not have to worry about it after. I will then be able to just sit back and relax and watch all of the other presentations.

My favorite book store in Bratislava has been closed, and our favorite restaurant closed for renovation. This was quite a disappointment. on the bright side however the Irish Pub serving Guinness is still open.

That's all from me in Bratislava I hope that you guys come visit me if you're here this year otherwise see you soon.