90's/2000's I believe. Why is this relevant? You can't guarantee that history will always spin in one direction.
TIL: Today I Learned
- Thread starter Cutlass
- Start date
- Status
90's/2000's I believe. Why is this relevant? You can't guarantee that history will always spin in one direction.
If there was a absolute best time to force them to apologize, it's likely past. Liberalism is already showing cracks. My impression is that the Church is feeling a bit less threatened than it was.
sophie
Break My Heart
Not nearly enough free language/speech generation in your regime. It's fine if all you want is to be able to read rudimentary texts. But it'll be pretty sorely lacking if you want to:
1) compose original material (spoken or written)
2) converse with other speakers of the language
3) translate from [language] to English or vice-versa
4) perform close textual analyses of texts in [language]
You should also look to read some book-length or article-length material. Try to read a news article every day in the language you're learning or pick up a book and go to town. Reading something simple or something with whose English-language form you're quite familiar (e.g. Harry Potter, Le Petit Prince, etc.) is a good place to start.
Anything that motivates you to interact with the language is a good thing. Duolingo is good because of that, but as it currently exists, Duolingo is far, far too limited for you to get anything close to fluency on its own. Same with, say "watching Spanish soaps". You'll be able to understand speech in a general sense, but you probably wouldn't be able to carry on a conversation or produce any coherent utterances of your own. However as part of a larger regimen that includes regular conversation/composition and interaction with more complex instances of the language (e.g. lengthy narrative storytelling) it's absolutely helpful. The main thing, whatever you do, is that you spend at the bare minimum an hour practicing the language every day. Fluency typically takes at a minimum 7-10 years to achieve. Anybody who tells you otherwise is either overstating their command of the language or is trying to dupe you into overpaying for something that won't actually help you.
Trust me. I did an intensive Latin program: 5 days a week, 8 hours a day: learn the grammar in 6 weeks, plus a four week reading course. It was a fantastic way to hit the ground running, and three years on I can more or less get through the majority of Latin texts you put in front of me. But I also have no interest in Latin composition and obviously it's not really a language that one speaks.
I'm up to 9 years of German, 10 years of French, and 13 years of Spanish, and even then my French doesn't really extend beyond a high-school reading level and enough speaking skills to get by day-to-day without making myself look like a total ass.
Zkribbler
Deity
TIL: Over 80,000 Soviet troops taking Berlin. 
[I knew it was a lot, but wow.
]
[I knew it was a lot, but wow.
]TIL: Over 80,000 Soviet troops taking Berlin.
[I knew it was a lot, but wow.
That wasn't an exceptional number by the standards of major land battles in Europe in WWII.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
TIL: Over 80,000 Soviet troops taking Berlin.
[I knew it was a lot, but wow.
Lost 80K troops ?
Stalin had a tendancy to hide soviet losses and exaggerate Nazis losses. The soviets lost some 1.2 Mil defending Moscow in 1941
And by the time Soviet reached Berlin many of there front line units were in terriable shape and the soviet were scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of manpower. Soviets were even using concentration camp survivours as reinforcements at that stage.
The terminology you employ is eminently interesting.
It's really helpful that I actually live in a Hebrew-speaking country, no? I also know a few Spanish speakers.
That sounds disheartening. We'll see if I can prove you wrong.
I thought progressives had pretty much decided this was true (they like to believe it will rally and win in the end, but I'm not sure why that has to be the case).
sophie
Break My Heart
Definitely. Still you gotta put the work in. A friend of mine lived in Spain for 2 years and came away from the experience still not particularly great at speaking Spanish. Language learning is about forcing yourself to go out and experience new things, and learning to embrace failure, not as something scary or embarrassing, but as the core mechanism that allows you to learn and improve.[/quote]
Eh, you get out of it what you put in. My French practice has been sporadic and fairly undisciplined. My German has been far more rigorous and regimented, and as such is significantly better.
As I said the last time you asked about language learning: I'm merely telling you this to get you to understand that learning a language is hard work, and there really are no shortcuts in the endeavor.
Ever mix up languages? That must be a lot to carry in your head.
Also: how useful are Spanish/French/German in applying to university?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That sounds like it may have been Cheezy? He was, I believe, Episcopalian, shading into Anglo-Catholic. (Or at least it was, before he went a bit weird and kept talking about how "Trotsky had it coming." Hard to say what his affiliations were at that point.)
*ancient
How… appropriate.
It happens, sometimes, to those of us who speak many languages. Especially in the beginning stages and when you're tired.
It depends on what you want to do at university, and which university it is.
They're languages with large numbres of speakers so they always can come in handy on a resumé.
This is from the time when he still supported GWB, the War on Terror, etc., before he became a Communist and supported mass murder by a different party, right?
Last edited:
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
There was a bit in between where he was pro-Communist, anti-mass murder. I'm not really sure how his religious views evolved from there, it mostly happened while I was on a hiatus from the forum.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
You're not kidding!
You shouldn't do that kind of thing.
Last edited:
- Status
