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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 129 of 331 03 March 2013 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
ah, super dommage! I hope you they can get licensed in Canada soon - Hulu + really is a great resource. Having all these foreign films available is amazing. This afternoon I watched Cuba Libre, a totally stupid slapstick comedy about a group of artists in Madrid who are kicked out of their squat and end up taking over the Cuban embassy. I would have never ordered this or rented it - I don't even know if it's on dvd - and I just found it through random scrolling, but it was a great fun movie for a Saturday afternoon. Edited by kanewai on 14 March 2013 at 8:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 130 of 331 13 March 2013 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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So many challenges! Having streaming video has opened up lots of doors for language
study. I have a hard time following the dialogue in most movies, but find that good tv shows are much, much easier to understand. And because they're easier they're a bit more rewarding to watch, and I will watch more of them, and not just when I have the energy. 6WC (Spanish) - I'm finally hitting my groove, and was hoping that I could bust into the top 25. But I'm a couple hours behind, and I have commitments the next two nights. Next time! Super Challenge (French full, Spanish half) - 55.1 books and 52.1 movies in French (54%); 1.6 books and 5.7 films in Spanish (7%) Assimil Experiment (Greek): I'm out. ελληνικά (Ancient Greek) I had to drop Assimil - I hit a wall around Lesson 67 where nothing, and I mean nothing, was making sense. I put it aside and picked up my 1950's Teach Yourself. Now I spend fifteen minutes a day either drilling on noun declensions, or translating short pieces from the classics. This week I've been working my way through a selection from Herodotus on "How to catch a crocodile." The combination of Assimil plus a grammar book works for me. I'll eventually move back to Assimil for the recordings. I've looked around online for other options. There are a lot of recordings of professors talking about how to recite the poems and epics, but almost none of anyone actually reciting any poems or epics. French I finished two novellas: Pierre et Jean by Guy de Maupassant and La Symphonie Pastorale by André Gide. Gide might be my new favorite author - I've loved both stories that I've read so far. De Maupassant is good, but I get impatient with him - you pretty much know the big family secret in Pierre et Jean after a few pages, but it takes his characters fifty more to figure it out. Now I'm back to book four of Les misérables: L'idylle rue Plumet et l'épopée rue Saint-Denis. The first three books I used a parallel text. So far I haven't needed it this time - another sign the Super Challenge is working! So far there's been no plot, just a discussion on the Bourbon Restoration - history I know nothing about. I've been using Wikipedia a lot to figure out what he's talking about. I've also been watching Engrenage (Spiral), a French tv series that's a mix of cop show / soap opera. So far it's excellent. It reminds me of the better HBO series, with great acting and scripts. I also ordered the first disc of Kaamelott from eBay. It's a satire based around King Arthur and his knights. The preview clips look great. Spanish I added a half-challenge in Spanish. This was kind of foolish, but I didn't want to wait until 2014 / a new Super Challenge to start. I don't know how I'm going to read a book a week ... it takes me most of the week to read a ten-page short story. I've been making it up with movies and telenovelas. I'm already four episodes into La Fea más Bella, the Mexican version of Ugly Betty. Hulu has Spanish captioning, which helps a lot. It's a fun series, & very campy and over the top. It's a lot easier to watch a telenovela episode each night than it is to watch part of a movie. Edited by kanewai on 14 March 2013 at 8:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5123 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 131 of 331 14 March 2013 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||
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You keep being the star as far as content goes, and I am happy to hear that the Super Challenge is working
out so well for you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 132 of 331 22 March 2013 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think I do that much studying relative to most of you all ... until I start to log it here.
ελληνικά (Ancient Greek) I'm having the same challenges I used to have with Arabic - I spend so much time just trying to understand the text, and looking up words and grammar points, that I don't make much actual progress. Luckily there are a lot more resources out there for ancient Greek than for Arabic. I'll keep slowly pushing forward. French It's been a good week for French! *** Kaamelott arrived, and is fantastic. The episodes are only three to four minutes long, and full of rapid-fire dialogue. eBay has Region 1 DVDs from Canada with English subtitles. The episodes are fun enough that I enjoy watching them multiple times, and each time I understand a bit more of the humor. Here's two clips I found on YouTube The Purifier - The Inquisitor accuses two of Arthur's knights of sorcery. This clip has unofficial subtitles done by an amateur. Le chevalier mystère - Perceval de Galles is convinced that he's the legendary chevalier Provençal le Gaulois. No subtitles on this clip; I wish I could upload from my dvd because the word play is brilliant. The jokes revolve around the Welsh Percival not quite understanding the French accent, and thinking that "Provençal" and "Percival" are pronounced the same (and so he's already my favorite character). It's like a medieval French "Who's on first?" Engrenage has been great too. I found a bandes annonces for the first season with English subtitles. Meanwhile, back in 1832, Marius is still moping after Cosette in Tome 4 of Les misérables. He's been doing this since the middle of Tome 3. I thought I was lucky that Hugo didn't start the book with one of his lengthy tangents. No. Instead, it's been Marius not eating right, not working, not even keeping his clothes clean, and just wandering the streets of Paris hoping for another glimpse of her. Enough already. It's time for the barricades to arise. Flics include Les diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1954), a Hitchcock-style noir where two teachers plot the murder of an abusive headmaster; and Le Grand Voyage (Ismaël Ferroukhi, 2004), a road trip movie about a young guy who needs to drive his thick-headed (IMHO) father from France to Mecca. Spanish I'm seven epsidoes into La Fea más Bella. The subtitles are all in Spanish, which forces me to pay close attention, but I think I miss the details of the intrigue and cat fighting. The bigger problem: the theme song keeps becoming stuck in my head. Flics include Bruc. La llegenda (Daniel Benmayor, 2010. Spain), a basic action movie set in Catalunya, Cronos (1993, México), an indie horror movie from Guillermo del Toro, and Temporado de patos (Fernando Eimbcke, 2004. México), about two 13-year old boys and one long, lazy Sunday afternoon. Temporado also moved at the pace of a Sunday afternoon - it took me awhile to warm up to it, but by the end I loved it. I've been slowly working my way through Short Stories in Spanish: New Penguin Parallel Text. And I mean slowly, even with the parallel text. It's a nice collection of stories, and the formatting is nice, so this is a good stepping stone to longer works. I listened to the first episode of Pimsleur Spanish Plus this morning. This style of drill really helps, but it's very basic for a "Level 4." The sentences are as simple as "We live in New York" and "I am in Buenos Aires on business." This is a library copy; I would be pissed if I had paid for it. I'm still debating getting the actual Spanish IV this summer, though. Otherwise, I have about nine lessons left to finish the active wave of Assimil, and I want to finish FSI Unit 36 this weekend. After that I'll take a break from active studying. My Perfectionnement Espagnol (Assimil) arrived, but I think I'll hold off for a month and just do a lot of reading and tv watching for a month. And finally, here's a section from La Symphonie Pastorale that captures what I like so much about André Gide's style. The pastor and his son Jacques are arguing about the education of the blind girl, Gertrude. Both are in love with her, but neither will admit it. Jacques accuses his father of choosing doctrines "ce qui me plaît." The pastor thinks his son is becoming too dogmatic. Here's the pastor: Je cherche à travers l'Évangile, je cherche en vain commandement, menace, défence ... Tout cela n'est que de saint Paul. Et c'est précisement de ne le trouver point des paroles du Christ, qui gêne Jacques. Les âmes semblables à la sienee se croirent perdues ... - Mais, mon père, me dit-il, moi aussi je souhaite le bonheur des âmes. - Non, mon ami: tu souhaites leur soumission. - C'est dans la soumission qu'est le bonheur. ... Est-ce trahir le Chirst, est-ce diminuer, profaner l'Évangile que d'y voir surtout une méthode pour arriver à la vie bienheureuse? L'état de joie, qu'empêcherent notre doute et la dureté de nos coeurs, pour le chrétien est un état obligatoire ... Le pêche, c'est ce qui obscurit l'âme, c'est qui s'oppose à sa joie. My translation: I search through the Gospels, I seach in vain for any commendment, threat, prohibition ... All of that is solely the work of St. Paul. And it is precisely that these cannot be found in the words of Christ that torments Jacques. Souls seem to him things that are lost ... - But father, he tells me, I also wish for the happiness of souls. - No, my friend, you want their submission. - Happiness is found through submission. ... Doesn't this betray Christ, and diminish and profane the Gospels, which above all provide a method to achieve a happy life? The state of joy, which clears our doubt and softens the hardness of our hearts, is for a Christian a mandatory state ... Sin is that which darkens the soul, and is opposed to its joy. Edited by kanewai on 22 March 2013 at 10:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 133 of 331 31 March 2013 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Participles
I've been confused by all the talk on participles in my Greek books. It's one of those parts of speech that I only vaguely understood. Then I came across this brilliant passage in my Teach Yourself Greek (F. Kinchin Smith & T.W. Melluish, circa 1952): We don't think much of participles in English. We have only two worthy of the name. There is the present participle - 'He paused with his hand upon the door, musing a-while' - or the past participle - 'There's that cursed knocker again!' We may consider the present participle to be active, and the past participle to be passive. But we are abominably casual about the time of our participles. We have to use our own discretion in order to find out the time of an action referred to in a participle. Look at these: - (1) He went out, crying bitterly (2) Saying "Bah!" she swept out. In the first sentence we have the moist trail of evidence to prove that the exit and the tears were simultaneous. But nobody will imagine in the second that the lady's departure was accompanied by a prolonged and continuous "Bah!", like a sheep with a faulty sound-box. Yet there is nothing in the form of these two participles to suggest that their times, relative to that of the main verbs, are different. The fact is, that we English are suspicious of a lot of fancy participles, and make one or two do all the work. The Greeks, on the other hand, had stacks of them, "all carefully packed, with the name clearly written on each." What is more, they used them with fantastic precision. I wish more of my books had writing this good in them! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4998 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 134 of 331 01 April 2013 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
My word, that is very good. Kanewai, does the book give any biographical details for Kinchin Smith and Melluish? - Imagine having been fortunate enough to have had them as one's teachers, if that was indeed their profession! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 135 of 331 02 April 2013 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't find much information on them. The book was originally written in 1947, Smith
did a similar book for Latin, and it appears like it was the main Teach Yourself book until the early 1980's. From the title page: F. Kinchin Smith was a Sometime Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, and a Lecturer in Clasics, University of London Institute of Education. T.W. Melluish was a Sometime Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge, and a Senior Classical Master of Bec School. And while I love the writing, it is one hellacious book. I could never do it as instructed (spend two years, thoroughly memorize each chapter before moving on, don't use the answer key at the back unless you absolutely have to). There's not even a dictionary ... the index in back only gives you the chapter number as reference. And there are hundreds of vocabulary words in each lesson, so you end up doing a lot of hunting and searching. This is the reason that so many students hated Greek. It's unnecessarily cruel, and probably impossible to do without locking yourself away in a dungeon, or Oxford, for a couple years. They say you will never learn if you lean to heavy on the English translation. How times have changed! I'm doing this "Assimil-style" - reading and Greek, then the English, then the Greek, until I get it, and then moving on. A perfect course would combine the passages from this course (Aesop, Herodotus, Plato, Euripides, the Old Testament, the Iliad, the story of Orpheus - fantastic stuff!), the recordings and format of Assimil, and the clearer explanations of the modern Teach Yourself. Meanwhile, here's another gem: "There is another tense in the active, called the pluperfect. We are sure of your enthusiastic support when we counsel you not to learn this horror." There are plenty of other horrors they want you to memorize completely, so it's not like they are taking it easy on the student or anything. It's only a small reprieve. Edited by kanewai on 02 April 2013 at 11:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 136 of 331 09 April 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish Treasures
I'm still trying to find my balance in this phase of my Spanish journey. I thought it would be easy to find lots of good movies and shows, but it's been more challenging than I thought - everything seems to be cop shows or romances. I don't have cable, so I'm restricted to streaming video and internet. Still, I'm slowly finding really good material. A big frustration has been the lack of subtitles or close-captioning on the streaming videos, as I know that most of them had both in their originals! Here are my discoveries so far: Mun2 (online) - A mix of reality tv and telenovelas. No charge. La Reina del Sur (US) - only has half the season online, with subtitles. I watched a couple episodes on YouTube, and it was a great show, but the picture quality wasn't that great. I might order the season on disc once my Spanish is stronger. Escobar, El Patrón del Mal (Colombia) - full season, with subtitles. Hulu (online, streaming) - Has lots of telenovelas, but most don't have subtitles or close-captioning. It's frustrating, because the originals did! $7.99 / month. La Fea más Bella (México) - Close-captioned in Spanish. I watched eight episodes, but lost heart when I saw that the season has over 300 episodes. It's a fun show, but I can't imagine watching it all, especially as I know the ending. Isabel (Spain) - English sub-titles. A 13-episode mini-series about the life of Queen Isabel. The first episode was excellent. A good choice for fans of historic drama. Originally broadcast on DramaFever - see below. DramaFever (online, streaming) - A major discovery for me. Their main focus has been on Asia, but they have a new Latino section with Spanish and Argentine shows, and they say they'll have over 60 soon. They do their own subtitles (!), so this costs a bit more than other services. The first episodes are free, afterwards it's $9.99 / month. Un paso adelante (Spain) - Life at a performing arts school in Madrid. A must for fans of Fame or Glee! I watched the first episode last night, and would subscribe just for this. Mujeres Asesinas (Argentina) - A mini-series about women who kill. It gets good reviews, and is on my watch-list. Montecristo (Argentina) - Also on my watch-list. A miniseries about life during Argentina's dirty war. Netflix (streaming) - Netflix is really weak for Spanish shows, but I figure I'd put them on the list for the excellent Engrenage (France) and Ørnen: En krimi-odyssé (The Eagle, Denmark). ελληνικά (Ancient Greek) I finally hit a wall with Teach Yourself, and have moved on to the classic Homeric Greek by Pharr. I'm still amazed at how little I know after so much studying. I'm on lesson V, and Homer starts on lesson XII. This is the do-or-die point ... if I can't make it through this then maybe Greek isn't for me. French Les misérables - 1050 pages into the novel, and the barricades have finally started to rise! This is what I came for. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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