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emk
Diglot
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Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 377 of 1317
12 January 2013 at 4:39am | IP Logged 
Well, this has been a long ugly day, between paperasse and urgent security fixes in other people's code (on behalf of multiple clients). I did have one fun moment this morning: a Skype chat in French with tastyonions. I'm impressed how much he's managed to get out Assimil by heavily supplementing it with native media. If you're doing Assimil for one of your major languages, you may want to pick his brain and find out how he did it.

Because we could all use some humor, here are some recent articles from Topito:

Top 6 des lettres de non-motivation de Julien Prévieux (funny and sarcastic)
Top 60 des étapes par lesquelles passe un accro à Facebook (I'm so glad I don't do Facebook)
Top 10 des jeux vidéo les plus attendus de 2013
Top 10 des étapes par lesquelles passe obligatoirement un roman « thriller »
Top 20 des choses qu’on pourra raconter à nos petits enfants

I may have already posted the second of these already, but I'm really enjoying the writing at girls and geeks. This is the kind of smart, informal, and well-written blogging that I really like in English and can never find enough of in French:

Lettre à M.Playskool (parenting humor)
Nouvel an et come-back sur l’Inde (feminism and crime in India, in light of recent events)

And one science link:

L'astéroïde Apophis s'approchera de la Terre ce soir

I've more-or-less placed an order on Amazon.fr, but my bank is having trouble convincing the credit card company that yes, I really buy things in France. Anyway, here's my big winter acquisition to keep my Super Challenge more-or-less on track, assuming the bank can fix things:

L'étrange vie de Nobody Owens by Neil Gaiman. An excellent older children's novel, translated from English.
Les frontieres de l'infini by Bujold. Three novelettes of smart space opera, translated from English.
Aldebaran, tomes 2 & 3. More BD sci-fi goodness!
Angel - L'intégrale des 5 saisons. The Buffy spinoff.

I'm still leaning towards reading French translations of my favorite books. As before, I really love the little bit of extra context I get from knowing the story. But more importantly, I know the story is going to be worth my time. There's nothing like spending $12 on French paperback only to find out I wouldn't finish it in English. (Finishing books is hard when you're a parent, and doubly so in another language.)

If all goes well, I may be making another short trip to Montreal this month. If so, I'll try to slip in to a Renaud-Bray and see if there's anything else I can't bear to live without.

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kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4898 days ago

1386 posts - 3054 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 378 of 1317
12 January 2013 at 5:57am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:

A small amount of explicit learning can often lay the groundwork for a huge amount
of explicit learning.
In other words, two weeks obsessing about always getting
gender right can be leveraged into months of learning from input, because my brain
often notices the gender of articles and adjectives, which in turn helps with nouns. An
hour of flipping through Grammaire progressive can make interesting uses of the
subjunctive a lot more noticeable in Rendez-vous avec Rama.

A huge amount of implicit learning can also lay the groundwork for a short bout of
explicit learning.
I never opened a grammar book until I passed B1 (and I only
skimmed the lesson notes in Assimil). When I finally did read a grammar book, I blew
through it in two hours and it was pretty much one non-stop revelation after another.

But if I try to do the explicit learning without the implicit learning, everything
turns into a grueling slog and I just stop. If I try to do the implicit learning
without the explicit learning, everything takes a lot longer.


If we ever do a Greatest Insights thread for HTLAL, this needs to be on it. I'm having
the same experience now - with, of all things, the French subjunctive - and this puts
so many of my half-thoughts into words.
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tastyonions
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goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4674 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 379 of 1317
12 January 2013 at 1:59pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
I'm still leaning towards reading French translations of my favorite books. As before, I really love the little bit of extra context I get from knowing the story. But more importantly, I know the story is going to be worth my time. There's nothing like spending $12 on French paperback only to find out I wouldn't finish it in English. (Finishing books is hard when you're a parent, and doubly so in another language.)

That's a really good idea. And also, if you still have the original, you can consult the English version if you really get stuck (probably not much of a problem for you anymore, but it would be for me).

And thanks for the compliments again. Hopefully if the new tutor I just signed up for works out, we can talk again and I'll be able to contribute more to the conversation. :-)
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geoffw
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1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 380 of 1317
13 January 2013 at 4:12am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:

I've more-or-less placed an order on Amazon.fr, but my bank is having trouble convincing the credit card company
that yes, I really buy things in France.


Ha! I know the feeling. I've had my card suspended and/or gotten a call from fraud services at least twice now
(losing track), no doubt based on my charges to France. (It's always been easy to clear up, but my credit card and
bank account are both with the same wonderful credit union.) Good luck!
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tastyonions
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1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 381 of 1317
13 January 2013 at 4:41am | IP Logged 
Ha, I just made my first ever orders from amazon.fr a few days ago. I hope my bank doesn't react that way! :-P

Edited by tastyonions on 13 January 2013 at 4:41am

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emk
Diglot
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United States
Joined 5541 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 382 of 1317
13 January 2013 at 5:22am | IP Logged 
Thank you, kanewai! I'm glad my post was of use. And, yeah, I love Amazon.fr. Where else am I going to be able to buy bilingual readers in Egyptian and French?

Today, while spending and hour and 40 minutes waiting in line at a government office, I amused myself by reading parallel English/Spanish posters. It's surprising how much sense written Spanish makes when I have sufficiently strong context. And it's almost like my eyes work differently now—I find the I'm automatically picking out genders and endings and systematic sound shifts. This is probably a side-effect of doing so much extensive reading in French.

On giving and receiving advice

Khatzumoto's recent post about the 10 commandments of AJATT has really stuck in my head, largely thanks to the following paragraph:

Quote:
You’ll notice that most of these suggestions are behavioral rather than technical. I think people’s behavior patterns are far more crucial than technique specifics. In fact, I’ve seen people with bad behavior patterns and perfectionistic, “type A” attitudes literally run themselves into the ground with my technical advice. AJATT happens to have better technical advice for getting used to Japanese than one is (or, at least, was) likely to get anywhere else. However, that advice is predicated on a foundation of…just chilling out and enjoying oneself.


This is why it's so hard to give good advice, especially if you're already pretty good at something. Advice only works in a given context. That context might be a shelf of highly amusing DVDs and comic books, from which you haphazardly extract some cool sentences that catch your eye. And that was Khatzumoto's context when he first encouraged everybody to go find 10,000 sentences and stick them in SRS software.

But let's change the context, and imagine a type A student (driven, obsessive, a future candidate for a stress-induced heart attack), and tell them they can learn Japanese by collecting 10,000 sentences. So our student grabs a grammar book and starts typing in every single example sentence, no matter how boring, and never spends much time with native media. But there's a lot wrong with those sentences. They don't have a surrounding story to provide context. They're not funny or awesome or even all that interesting. And most importantly, they weren't chosen. You can put some pretty dry, hairy sentences in your Anki deck as long as they mean something to you.

Depending on the context, "10,000 sentences" could be pretty fun, or it could be horrifying. Which is why Khatzumoto now writes articles like The Ten Commandments of AJATT these days, and spends most of his time talking about the context:

Quote:
3.Thou shalt not hold back on media.

Media is the air you breathe and the blood that flows through your veins. Buy, borrow, acquire FUNBUN (for-native-by-native) media — books, movies, video games, magazines, food, etc. — like your life depends on it. That means regularly, massively, plowing through it. You are a media buyer. You are the programming director of your own Japanese media conglomerate. Entertain yourself.

7. Thou shalt not work hard. Be a couch potato. Passive time should far outstrip active time.

“Active” study tops out very quickly. Only do a little of it. Thou shalt not run a marathon. Sprint. Work briefly, little and often, in short bursts. The rest of your time — most of your time — should be spent being lazy. Video games, cartoons, tabloids, smut, hanging out, music are your staple diet. Intellectual junk food is broccoli-and-spinach-level good for you, if it’s in Japanese. Everything bad is good for you, if it’s in Japanese.


There's a lot of interesting advice tucked away in those AJATT articles, but a lot of it only makes sense in retrospect, once you've actually run into the same problems. Again, giving advice is hard. But an observation like, "Intellectual junk food is broccoli-and-spinach-level good for you, if it’s in Japanese," is profoundly true in my experience. Similarly, Iversen's distinction between "intensive" and "extensive" activities has really inspired me, even though I find most his technical advice ill-suited to how I learn.

Fortunately, I think the online language-learning community is slowly leaving behind gurus and flamewars and debates over the One True Methodology. These days, it increasingly resembles a big community swapping handy ideas back and forth. And everybody can get together and sing "Skype Me Maybe." And this suits me well, because I'm always happy to read other people's stories, and try out anything which seems like it might be useful and fun.
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tastyonions
Triglot
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Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 383 of 1317
13 January 2013 at 12:51pm | IP Logged 
I like reading AJATT. Many of his articles are quite motivating.

I've definitely taken on board the "everything bad is good for you" philosophy lately. I probably watch at least thirty minutes to an hour of lowbrow YouTube videos a day, often more. Anything is fair game, even reality TV shows, because as long as it's in French it helps me work on my comprehension and find new words and expressions. :-)
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emk
Diglot
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United States
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2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
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 Message 384 of 1317
13 January 2013 at 9:51pm | IP Logged 
I read Tintin : L'Île Noire in something like a half hour list night. It's one of the easiest Tintin's that I've read, and the plot follows Chandler's famous advice: "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." My two favorite Tintin volumes, Objective Lune and On a marché sur la lune, are a lot more substantial.

I've been very impressed by all the cool BD images in Quique's log. Unfortunately, my flatbed scanner is hard on BDs, so I've only uploaded a few carefully scanned panels. But I recently saw DIY Book Scanner, and they have some cheap homemade scanner designs that look very promising.

So here's the very first prototype, just to figure out what the major obstacles might be. The ingredients are a decent digital camera, a large sheet of glass to hold the pages flat, and a bright work light:



Here's the first photo, from IRS All Watcher #4.



This is a fairly generic spy thriller comic, sort of what James Bond would be like without gadgets and jokes. You can find more images on Google Image Search. This is neither an outstanding work of art, nor one my favorite guilty pleasures. But if your guilty pleasures happen to include spy movies, it might be worth a look.

To improve my DIY scanner, I'm going to need several ultra-bright, adjustable lights to get even illumination, and I'm going to need to use my tripod to avoid the blurry text at the top of the image. Or maybe Quique will give me some tips. :-)

And once I get the bugs out, I'm going to start uploading a few sample pages from some seriously sweet BDs. There's some great stuff out there.


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