Xmmm's less work more play log

[Expugnator]

Damasceno Monteiro sounds so Brazilian...I have a good friend who is Damasceno and I have Monteiro thanks to carbon copying from my dad.

[Xmmm]

Damasceno Monteiro sounds so Brazilian...I have a good friend who is Damasceno and I have Monteiro thanks to carbon copying from my dad.

Yeah ... Antonio Tabucchi was an Italian writer who wrote about Portugal. I guess he actually taught Portuguese literature. Sostiene Pereira was all in Portugal, and so far La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro is all in Portugal. Even Italian characters are few and far between.

[Xmmm]

Italian

I've read 259 pages so far this month, and finally did some listening. "Giulio Cesare" from Alle otto della sera. The musical interludes are a little weird, but the narrator is good and the level of writing is on the easy side -- which is good, I guess, because I have 90%+ comprehension and can relax a bit while I listen. I downloaded about 20 of these six hour histories so I'm set for a while.

Also, I'm taking a break from La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro and instead I've started:

STORIA DELLA DECADENZA E ROVINA DELL'IMPERO ROMANO DI EDOARDO GIBBON


as it says on gutenberg.org ...

Russian

I've read 174 pages this month. I was reading a lot more in November and December, but have been slacking off. I did listen to 22 hours of audiobooks--at a little too high a level maybe. I don't see an alternative to just trying to power through and up my game here, because I'm not finding young adult audio books anywhere (maybe I look in the wrong places).

Turkish

I've read 329 pages in January, but only listened to 11 hours. I'm thinking I should just watch either The Gift (if it's any good) or Ezel without subtitles for a while. It's amazing how many times you here "Kim sensin" (who are you) in Turkish serials, and not in a normal sense of "I haven't seen you before" but in an existential sense when the friend is acting weird or betraying the protagonist. I haven't heard it even one time in Yanık Koza, though, which goes to show how odd this second-tier soap is -- considering everyone has secrets, and is betraying everyone else, I would expect to hear it every episode.


Edit: The Gift is typical Netflix crap, and Ezel, one of the best Turkish soaps, has been removed from Netflix. This is a continuation of a disturbing trend. Fortunately Vatanım Sensin is still available on Kanal D.

[Xmmm]

January Totals

IT: listening (12 hours), reading (345 pages), Italki (3 hours)

I listened to "Giulio Cesare" and "La primavera di Praga" on Alle otto della sera.

Storia della decadenza e rovina is going great! I'm halfway through the first of thirteen volumes, so there must be at least 5000 pages to go through, and Edward Gibbon is very readable.

Italki -- I don't know. I'm trapped at intermediate level, where I'm fairly conversant but still use too many simple declarative sentences. I haven't felt like I've made progress in a while, but then again I only speak Italian an hour a week so maybe that's as good as I can get under the circumstances.


RU: listening (24 hours), reading (207 pages), Italki (4.5 hours)

The only thing good about my Russian this month was a noticeable improvement in my speaking. I might still get the case ending wrong, but at least now I have "case consciousness" and am not just putting everything in the nominative. And sometimes I get the case right. Anyway, progress.

TR: listening (15 hours), reading (359 pages)

The listening was all Yanık Koza and Vatanım Sensin. I've had a little breakthrough in terms of listening so I'm going to turn off the Turkish subtitles. I will just listen, and then read the transcript to pick up what I missed.

I forgot how much I liked the bad guy (Tevfik) in Vatanım Sensin. The actor really steals every scene he's in. He's just a bundle of nervous energy -- eyes darting around, jaw twitching, stopping every 15 seconds to take a deep breath, etc.

[DaveAgain]

Storia della decadenza e rovina is going great! I'm halfway through the first of thirteen volumes, so there must be at least 5000 pages to go through, and Edward Gibbon is very readable.

I'm on vol 6 in French (stalled due to German push). He is good.

[Xmmm]

It had been a while so I took the Leipzig vocab test in Italian:

LeipzigItalian20200208.png

That took about three years and about 10000 pages of reading. I don't know what happened with the crappy score on section one -- I think I was rushing to bank time for sections 4 and 5 maybe ...

All my reading goals for the week were shot to hell by a rather nasty bout of flu ... and I have company coming into town next week so that's like to to be another week lost or half-lost.

In case the image disappears later: 25/30, 29/30, 29/30, 25/30, 25/30.

Update: I took the Italian productive test and didn't do as well there: 11/18, 8/18, 1/18, 8/18, 6/18. So there would seem to be a receptive->productive gap.

[reineke]

It had been a while so I took the Leipzig vocab test in Italian:

LeipzigItalian20190208.png

That took about three years and about 10000 pages of reading. I don't know what happened with the crappy score on section one -- I think I was rushing to bank time for sections 4 and 5 maybe ...

All my reading goals for the week were shot to hell by a rather nasty bout of flu ... and I have company coming into town next week so that's like to to be another week lost or half-lost.

In case the image disappears later: 25/30, 29/30, 29/30, 25/30, 25/30.

Update: I took the Italian productive test and didn't do as well there: 11/18, 8/18, 1/18, 8/18, 6/18. So there would seem to be a receptive->productive gap.

Gee ya think? It's the test that everyone skips. I remember one member who completed it (I suspect just to feel bad about it). That study I posted in my log about the oral proficiency of Dialang users who scored C2 in English also presents some sobering results. Btw, I counted -grovigl- 5 times while listening to four random episodes of Alle otto della sera. Catasta might take a little longer.

[Xmmm]

And I might as well take it in Russian as well:

LeipzigRussian20200208.png

[Xmmm]

Gee ya think? It's the test that everyone skips. I remember one member who completed it (I suspect just to feel bad about it). That study I posted in my log about the oral proficiency of Dialang users who scored C2 in English also presents some sobering results. Btw, I counted -grovigl- 5 times while listening to four random episodes of Alle otto della sera. Catasta might take a little longer.

Alle otto della sera reminds me of the old Benny Hill skit which purports to be a pilot of a new ITV4 cultural series called "Poetry and Jazz." And consists of Benny reading one of his deplorable limericks while the old guy plays a trombone horribly in the background ...

I listened to "Giulio Cesare" and they would say something in Italian like "Julius Caesar decided it was time to finally teach the Gauls a lesson", and it would break into rap in English like "Putting on my game face/Not being a disgrace." -- Very weird but it worked somehow.

"Scipione L'Africano" was also fine with just little blasts of instrumental music.

"La primavera di Praga" was hard to get through -- there would be five minutes of Italian followed by up to two minutes of really bad mostly unknown songs sung in English about being sad (or something). They all sounded like "Listen to the Flower People."

I'm really appreciative of the resource, but it's a weird concept unevenly executed!

[reineke]

You might enjoy this one. I've survived listening through D'Annunzio a Fiume and Le Tre Guerre d'indipendenza featuring dirty Croats (although at the end they get to kick ass) and I'd advise you to keep listening. Alessandro Barbero's lectures are a good alternative.