Ketutar and languages

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Ketutar
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Languages: Finnish (N), Swedish, English, French (~A1)
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Postby Ketutar » Fri Jul 22, 2016 8:46 am

I have posted my first audio at Lingora! http://www.elingora.com/
It was horrible!
I sound horrible!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

But I did it, I survived, and I'm so proud of myself X-D

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have transported Arséne Lupin from Gutenberg to Readlang. It's easier to read on-line when you see only a small part of the page. I wish I had it as a paperbook...
I have started to read Le Petit Nicolas. I have read all those books in Finnish when I was a kid. They are still so funny, I laugh out loud when I read them :-D
I have ordered that book from une librairie en-ligne, mais it hasn't arrived yet.

I also ordered Asterix Le Gaulois. The language was very witty in the Finnish version, and the stories are very funny, so I think I'll get the whole series in French. I can't wait to see what it's like in French! I'm very excited and expecting a grand feast!

I have added some of the "learn French for free" sites to my morning practice, like Lingvist, Duolingo and FSI
https://learn.lingvist.io
https://www.duolingo.com/
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/french.html

I have added Karlberg's French for Reading to my study list as well... I want to go and find some "false friends", and the usual endings of the cognates... I saw someone had made that list in Spanish, it should exist in French as well. Or then I need to do it myself...

I was also playing at Lyricstraining, c'est très, très marrant!
http://lyricstraining.com/fr

I really need to get back to parsing... I love it, but I procrastinate. It's a bit tiring, so I go and play games at Facebook instead, and say "it's ok, because my Facebook is en français :-D
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Memrise: 656 / 1657
5000 words: 2300 / 5000

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Ketutar
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Ketutar » Fri Jul 22, 2016 11:19 am

Sandberg: French for Reading

"French nouns have been arbitrarily designated as either masculine or feminine"

I oppose the use of "arbitrarily". I'm sure there are very logical and consistent rules to why the different nouns were considered as masculine or feminine.
Like the river names - once upon a time some people thought that rivers were/had deities, and the river's name got its gender by the gender of the deity.
Now, there's of course exceptions, but even those exceptions were fully logical and rational when they were made.
Languages are after all logical, by SOME standard, even when they might seem illogical by MY standard.

I wish he had left the word "arbitrarily" out, even when I understand that it is easier for the reader to learn the gender as an arbitrary detail than start thinking about the logic behind the genders... :-D As there are so many nouns where the logic of the gender designation is lost in the history :-D
I mean, it could be as simple as "Well, they call it masculine, so we do as they do. Though it should be feminine."
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5000 words: 2300 / 5000

Arnaud
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Arnaud » Fri Jul 22, 2016 5:17 pm

deleted
Last edited by Arnaud on Tue Sep 13, 2016 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ketutar
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Ketutar » Sat Jul 23, 2016 12:00 pm

Arnaud wrote:Again a member of the club of people who underestimate themselves. ;)
You write correctly at your level, and your accent is not the catastrophe I was expecting after reading your message. It's understandable without the text except the last word "pratiquer" and the "je vis en suède" where the liaison is more detrimental than anything else.


Yay! :-) Thank you :-)
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Ketutar
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Ketutar » Sat Jul 23, 2016 12:11 pm

So... a week to 6WC...

I am tempted to play with another language... right now I feel my French is going strong, and I assume I could keep it up by reading books and watching movies... about 2 hours a day. So I could switch my focus to something else for six weeks...
But I am scared it will backfire. That I SHOULD keep focused in French. I SHOULD give French this whole year and the next to get it to a level I'm comfortable with, BEFORE I start "upkeeping"...
But... it's so tempting! X-]

And then, IF I choose to participate in 6WC with another language, what about AFTER the 6WC? It's irresponsible to take pets just over a couple of weeks and then leave them to starve to death! Would I need to "upkeep" that language for the rest of the year, and how will THAT affect my French?

Maybe I'll skip this 6WC, just to be sure, and take the next one.

I can play with my "52 in 52" languages when I feel tempted to learn yet another language :-D
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Jul 23, 2016 12:33 pm

You know, you don't have to take up a new language to do the 6WC. You just have to choose a target language where your level is no higher than B1. Since you list French as A1, you could do it in French. Do join. It's fun.
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Ketutar
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Ketutar » Mon Jul 25, 2016 12:58 pm

I took part of a level test in French: http://www.francaisfacile.com/test-de-n ... ancais.php
and my prepositions are in very sad state :-D

I only managed 8 questions, and I'm exhausted. :-D

Ok, ok, I accept my level to be A1 or A2, perhaps B in some points. But I never claimed to be anything more than a little bit more than an absolute beginner :-D

So - yesterday was the first day this month I managed to have some order in my studies.
Right now it is:
Memrise
Les Voyageurs, reading forum posts and blogs
Duolingo
Readlang, reading novels
Lingvist
Lyricstraining as practice before the movie/series
Movie/series

Now, I SHOULD write something to iTalki and say something at Lingora and upkeep my blog every day, but... well... it's going to happen.

I also want to add some French blogs to this list, (writers, food, arts and crafts and the "zebras". The mythical, mystical, weird, odd, supernatural and paranormal, fantasy and scifi, witches and magic and strange and peculiar and things that are curiouser and curiouser :-D)
news,
podcasts,
"verb of the day"
and FSI
and the parsing! X-] I'm still procrastinating that, even though I know it's the best thing I can do - I learn things and I like doing it, so why oh why is it so hard to get on with it?
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Memrise: 656 / 1657
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Ketutar
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Re: Ketutar and languages

Postby Ketutar » Mon Jul 25, 2016 1:07 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:You know, you don't have to take up a new language to do the 6WC. You just have to choose a target language where your level is no higher than B1. Since you list French as A1, you could do it in French. Do join. It's fun.


Now when you say it, I think I do know :-D I was thinking it has to be A0 level :oops:
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Ketutar
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Ket babbles, gibbers and twaddles

Postby Ketutar » Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:54 pm

I bet you are all so fed up with me :-D

Someone asked a question if it is possible to learn a 100 words a day.
Of course it is. Actually, you can learn 100 words in a couple of hours.
And to prove this, I have taken upon me a language challenge of just that; learning 100 words a day for a couple of months, that is, the 5000 most common words in French. I am on day three, and so far it feels easy, but the most common words of French are basically pretty easy. Heard all of them a lot of times, but I think it is kind of nice that it gets harder and harder the more of a habit it becomes. The challenge stays fresh so to say, and is naturally graduated.

Now, people say it's possible to only learn some 20-30 words a day, and I say that's bull... or perhaps it takes that long for them to learn. What do I know? To me the problem arises when it comes to remembering the words, like, forever. :-D How would I know what I will remember a week from today? Or a month? Or a year? Will I still know these words in a year from now? Can I say I have learned them, when I know them now? Or tomorrow, when I go through my word deck again? Have I learned them?

Oh, and I got to parsing and, yes, it is fun, I love it, and it is educational. And I feel a BIT stupid for not doing it earlier X-D
I especially love the verbs... Subjunctive sounds so interesting and exotic :-D Plus-que-parfait... Pluskvamperfekti eli entispäättymä. <giggle>
Feminine singular past participle. Yes, I know, I'm weird :-D

Yesterday I learned the difference of un an and une année. You know "soiree"? The fancy word for supper or "evening party"? Or matinée - the fancy word for morning movie time? That is when you take a period of time and make an event of it. -ée. So un an is a year, period of time, and une année is the year as an event.

And then I watched a French movie... or... sort of French. It was spoken in English and subtitled in French. I don't think it counts as watching a French movie. But it was made in France. *sigh* I wish it was spoken in French, so that I could with good conscience log in one more movie for today. :-(

Then I have been reading articles and blogs and newspapers and all kinds of stuffs like that... and I wonder how I can log that in, and if I should or should I stay "clean" and only log in books... hmm... Decisions, decisions...

But, still going with French.

I hope a good journey to the rest of the Voyageurs, and I hope the inspiration stays and burns steadily and strongly :-)
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Mani
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Re: Ket babbles, gibbers and twaddles

Postby Mani » Thu Jul 28, 2016 7:24 am

Ketutar wrote:I bet you are all so fed up with me :-D


Nope. ;)
I actually enjoy reading about how enthusiastically you embrace the task of learning languages, especially French.

Ketutar wrote: Yesterday I learned the difference of un an and une année. You know "soiree"? The fancy word for supper or "evening party"? Or matinée - the fancy word for morning movie time? That is when you take a period of time and make an event of it. -ée. So un an is a year, period of time, and une année is the year as an event.


The above part of your log caught my eye because I remember that I had difficulties with this difference, too and I think it's not quite as you've understood it ... an/jour/matin/soir are the words for the (for a lack of a better word) "time unit" they represent while année/journée/matinée/soirée describe the duration or lenght of this "time unit".

So you'd say:

Il a 3 ans.
L'année dernière, je suis allée en Belgique 3 fois.
Hier soir j'ai vu ma copine. On a joué aux cartes toute la soirée.

I'm not very good at explaining but I hope you can see what I mean. :)

Good luck for your language learning and lots of fun with it! And please go on writing about it - I enjoy reading your log very much! :D
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