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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 193 of 1317 09 August 2012 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||
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FR: J'ai appris tous 204 hiéroglyphes, et j'ai commencé Assimil. La première
semaine était concentrée sur le système d'écriture et sur du vocabulaire. Je n'aime pas étudier des mots sans contexte, mais c'est pas vraiment difficile avec Anki. La deuxième semaine me convient plus, parce qu'il y a des phrases complètes, et je trouve ce contexte vraiment utile. Le cours Assimil me semble très intéressant jusqu'à maintenant. Il y a moins de texte que d'habitude, mais je suis intéressé par le premier sujet. EN: Wow, Egyptian grammar is already pretty interesting, despite only being on the 9th day of Assimil. Lots of sentences have no verb at all. Here are some samples:
It looks like the next lessons cover various particles and discourse markers, and then we'll eventually start in on verbs. And judging from my Egyptian linguistics book, Egyptian verbs are insanely versatile, and can stand in for most other parts of speech. There are actually two modern theories of how Egyptian verbs work: the "Standard Model" and what's jokingly referred to as "Not-So-Standard Model". The latter model is prefered by linguists, and it tends to say stuff like, "Yes, that's a verb, doing something weird", as opposed to the former model, which prefers to say things like, "This verb here is promoted to a noun phrase in the grammar." Both Assimil and my excellent Egyptian linguistics book adhere to the Not-So-Standard Model, which is good, because I'm definitely prepared to accept that Egyptian verbs are weird. What an incredibly fun language! EGY: 
𓄤𓆑𓂋𓇋𓏏𓂋𓅱𓈗 (nfr itrw) (Et je souhaite ainsi trouver assez de temps pour une balade en kayak demain après- midi.) Edited by emk on 09 August 2012 at 3:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4390 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 194 of 1317 09 August 2012 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Je suis heureux de lire que tu continues ton apprentissage de l'égyptien et que tu t'y
amuses bien! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 195 of 1317 17 August 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Merci, Swift ! Je souhaite que tout aille bien pour toi aussi. Je viens d'acheter un livre en français sur le kayak en eaux vives. Je suis très heureux qu'il y ait dans ce livre du vocabulaire pour le Québec et pour la France. Edited by emk on 17 August 2012 at 7:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4390 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 196 of 1317 17 August 2012 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Merci, je suis maintenant vraiment content de mon progrès la semaine passée. Mais est-ce-
que tout va bien là pour toi? Tes fautes me surprennent beaucoup. Peut-être que tu utilisais ton portable, ça peut être frustrant quand son dictionnaire corrige ce qu'on tape sur le clavier. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 197 of 1317 17 August 2012 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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A periodic update: French
It's now a little over two months since I took the DELF B2. I'm using my French fairly heavily, but I'm not exactly studying it, as such. I speak French with my wife, my in- laws, their friends, and random strangers in Quebec. But the big limit right now is time: I have two busy toddlers, a business to run, a new exercise program, and a daily Assimil lesson for Egyptian (more on this below). So it's hard to put in the hours that would take me from B2 to C1. So my goal right now is to hold onto my B2 French, solidify it, and keep using lots of French in my daily life. Either I'll reach C1 gradually, or I'll lay the groundwork for another big push later on. Buffy continues to be lots of fun, and it's been a half-season since I had major problems with an episode. I can comfortably follow at least 80% of the dialog (even if I don't get every word of that 80%), and my biggest problems are (1) manic rants by Xander, (2) Cordelia doing her Valley Girl thing, and (3) fast-speaking monsters with strange vocal distortions. And if I watch a couple of Buffy episodes back to back, my French generally goes from "semi-fluent" to "I can say most of what I want without thinking." Note to self: Watch more TV. It's good for you. B2 is a weird level. I can say pretty much anything I want to say, but I often need to think a bit. I routinely spend days at a stretch living my life in French. But there are days when English feels like walking downhill, and French feels like walking uphill. To paraphrase Hamlet, when the wind is north-by-northwest, I can speak an almost fluent French. The rest of the time, I can communicate. Montreal and language switching And one fascinating problem in Montreal: I want to speak French, but I always feel silly doing so when the other person speaks fully native English. The locals have a clever and unobtrusive dance they do to figure out which language to use. This dance often starts with the classic "Bonjour/Hi!", or a word perfectly balanced between "Hello" and "Allô". And they're remarkably gracious about it, even if you flub the dance steps. So I'm torn between using my French, and learning the dance. Bonjour-Hi: Decoding Day-to-Day Bilingualism Last weekend, I mistakenly started speaking English to a clerk at Renaud-Bray after he greeted me with "Hello". He was happy to hold the conversation in English. But when it became apparent that he had some holes in his vocabulary, we switched right over to French and stayed there. He took me all around the store and showed me all the books about Egypt. The next day, I was buying some pain au chocolat and carrying a book of short stories in French. The young man behind the counter was speaking to his coworkers in a mix of fluent English and French. As it turns out, he knew the author, and asked me some questions about the book in very fast French. My brain sort of seized up: Do I answer his questions in French, and "drop the ball" once or twice during the conversation? Do I switch to English? So I answered him briefly and politely in French, and left with my pastry before I was forced to figure out which option Miss Manners would have recommended. What a gloriously polite problem. I've never seen anybody from Montreal get upset about language choice. Egyptian I'm so torn. Egyptian is a wonderful language. It's even terser than Old Norse, and it's teaching me just how gloriously strange grammar can get. Here are some examples adapted from Assimil:
So I desperately want to keep learning Egyptian once my "30 day trial" is up, because wow, it's cool. And the writing system is thoroughly civilized: Mostly phonetics with some ideograms mixed in to clarify. But I'm running out of free time, and I can't keep all of this up for much longer. So I'll need to replan my schedule in the next couple of weeks. But fortunately I've been making Anki cards as I go along, so I shouldn't forget too much of what I've learned, even if I take a break. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 198 of 1317 17 August 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Merci ! Je les ai corrigées. Si tu lis mes messages en anglais, tu trouveras des fautes similaires. Il manque parfois un lien entre mon cerveau et mes doigts. :-( Aujourd'hui, j'ai passé 40 minutes à écrire un journal sur HTLAL, mais la plupart de mon temps a été consacré à mon travail en anglais. Et ça n'aide pas mon français, malheureusement. En fait, la qualité de mon français varie en fonction du nombre des heures de Buffy que je viens de regarder. Mon français est souvent « désactivé » et « activé » plusieurs fois par jour. Quand il est désactivé, je fais plus de fautes. Quand il est activé, j'essaye parfois même d'écrire aux anglophones en français. Oui, c'est un peu triste, en fin de compte. (Pour ce message, j'ai du « redémarrer » mon français un peu… Mais je suis sûre qu'il y a encore des fautes.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4390 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 199 of 1317 17 August 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
I can relate completely. Once I am consistent with my "studies" and spend a few days trying to think and speak to myself in French, expressing more abstract concepts becomes much easier and everything else is nearly automatic. Your post makes me realise I am lucky in the sense that I have a larger opportunity to get to C1 as I don't have any massive distractions in my life. Anyway, as long as you are content with where you are with the language that is what matters. I think as you mentioned, you can always try to keep your current level and come back to the language in force at a later date if you can't find a new routine that suits you. The only mistake I noticed was "Je suis sûre"... unless your profile picture isn't you, haha. Anyway, don't worry about any mistakes, they can always be remedied by some more intensive study as you've said. It would seem to be TV is that in your case. In fact, thanks, I think I'll start putting more emphasis on TV and films. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5173 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 200 of 1317 18 August 2012 at 5:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm feeling the time crunch too and I have nothing going on for the moment other than
my job hunt ;-) It's hard balancing multiple languages and I find myself favoring Spanish right now as I'm excited about how much progress I can make in a short time. French is harder just because I'm beyond the point of having a lot of structured activities to progress in it so it's harder to say "time to study French" and just pick up a book and end my session with a bunch of new knowledge. Meanwhile with Spanish I work on a chapter in one of my books or a lesson and I have measured progress. And I've been throwing Irish under the bus for a while (before it was Irish was blocking me from working on Spanish). So I'm going to work on some getting a structure and making myself a schedule. For French you can try some audio during workouts. And if you're able to work while listening to something that opens up some time as well. Radio France would be good for getting up to C1 level. And I love hearing about Montreal. For a moment I kind of forgot about it but looking around at rents here and other issues in general with policy in this country (health care and such) is steeling my resolve. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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