A4 Meta

Harry Potter is too hard. I'm postponing it until later.

And to continue the stupid inside joke with myself, I'm calling the next bit of my Czech learning "A4". I don't think I am at a B-anything level yet.

I came up with a feedback cycle that looks like this:

1. Decide what to read/watch/consume
2. Exposure (so...read it. Watch it.)
3. Find unknown words
4. Gather the unknown words. Organize them in order of frequency. Gather the original context of the top 10 most frequent words. Check the definitions of the rest of the words, make sure I know the basic form. Nová slova : a spreadsheet of my new words 
5. Guess (and find out) what the unknown words mean. Definice : a document with some explanations, visuals, mnemonic devices, definitions (duh), etc.
6. Gather several new contexts. Příklady : a document with several new contexts for my words.
7. Translate 10 examples of the new contexts. Překlady : a spreadsheet with examples and translations
8. Correct my translation. Překlady document gets loaded as a blog post.
9. Load the sentences with their translations to quizlet
10. Get a native speaker to record themselves saying the sentences
11. Listen to them (over and over and over and over)
12. Create a new copy set, record myself, listen to myself
13. Test myself on quizlet. Testy : a blog post with screenshots of my test results.
14. Use the new words in a sentence (written). Příklady document.
15. Correct my sentences. Příklady document gets loaded as a blog post.
16. Use the new words in a conversation. Mluvení : take notes about real interpersonal communication that I had (texting, skyping, emailing, etc.) 
17. Get a native speaker to make me a test. I haven't gotten this far yet. I guess it will end up as a screenshot of the Testy blog post.
18. Take the test
19. Correct the mistakes on the test. Again, this will probably end up as a screen shot for the Testy blog post.
20. Meta. Write a Meta blog post about my feelings/observations about my learning.

The items in bold are ones which will require the help of a native speaker.
The red items are "artifacts" for me to produce.

Organizing things this way instead of by chapters means that it is possible for me to read ahead in this book. Or to read less. Or to watch other movies. Or whatever. It also gives me permission to move forward while I wait for my collaborators to help me. Waiting for them does not need to hinder my progress in moving forward with my learning goals.

It looks ridiculous and complicated. It isn't. It's a feedback loop. It also looks linear. It isn't - at least, totally. I mean, I am waiting on #10 and I can move on to #14.

If they are frequently used words, that should not be a huge problem. There is ample room for words like "sice" and "aniž" to creep into a texting or spoken conversation. By the way, it is a thousand times easier to engage with Czechs this way than to get them to correct my stuff in google drive. I guess on a good day, I might communicate with like, five or more people in various ways. I guess it is a really low-stakes, low-effort way for them to "practice their English" (though we often end up speaking only in Czech). I will continue to look for good, competent collaborators who will be able to occasionally help me with specific tasks.

An advantage to organizing my study this way is that it also gives me *very specific* small requests. It isn't, "teach me x." It's, "write me an example of a sentence using these 10 words." Or, "record your voice saying these sentences." Or, "correct the mistakes I made." Always doused in a very heavy amount of polite begging. Won't you be, please won't you be, please won't you be...my teacher? :-)

My learning will still vaguely be organized by weeks. So I will be labeling my docs something like this:

A4.1.4
A4: the "class"
1: the week number
4: the item number on this list

It is just a stupid way to stay organized. But I discovered that I can't really currently handle the stress of letting anybody else into my maze of Czech awesomeness, aside from the little folder called "oprav mě, prosím!" It is just...it is anxiety inducing because it is so nerdy. I know it is.

But I do not care enough about feeling ashamed of my focused intensity on something that nobody else cares about (isn't that the definition of nerdiness?) to try to go about it another way. Anyway, what other way!? Nobody is going to teach me Czech; it is something I will have to put in all of my own personal effort to try to do. And I really am confident that sticking to this plan will be an effective way to try to maximize my Czech learning while filling in the holes of the things I don't know that I don't know yet. It has already worked very well in the last 9 weeks. I definitely feel like I'm progressing.

I won't be satisfied with my progress until I can read this specific book in my library without a dictionary. Right now that's beyond me. But it will come.

A3.10 Meta 2

Yeah so, after a bit of discussion about this with my husband ("is it an NP-complete optimization problem?" "Probably...") and spending about two hours - my only two hours, my precious, tiny, solitary scrap of time to myself to try to figure out how to get the Czech knowledge into my brain - plotting out potential solutions on my whiteboard (a very useful tool for me) and creating some spreadsheets of plans and thoughts, I come back to these facts:

• I have a very strong drive to start new things.
• I have a very strong ability to add too much to my workload. To overestimate my ability, to underestimate the time it will take. Things like that. They contribute to losing interest. 
• Harry Potter is too hard (now). It's not in the sweet spot where it's just challenging enough to be a stretch. I don't understand too much of the text. I should expect this; I tried reading a chapter in French and there were *quite* a few words I didn't understand there, either. Granted, it's still a better choice than Bylo nás pět. But still.
• I pick too many words for each chapter. The reasoning was to give myself a chance at getting a reasonable "grade." It feels crappy enough getting 75% of 33 words - take it to 10 and I might get 50%. That is not an acceptable grade. It's immensely discouraging. There's already enough negative feedback in my Czech learning world. But 33 words is really too much. I need smaller chunks.
• I think the longest I've ever been able to singlehandedly (or single mindedly?) focus on a project was about five weeks. Maybe two months. Then my interest fizzles - unless it is sustained by a relationship, someone to push me along, someone to whom I feel accountable (like several of my book writing projects). It's so STUPID. I wish I could drink a magical potion that filled my brain with the NEED to finish. Like, I really want to complete things, but it is nothing at all like the need to start things for me. My husband can't relate. He likes to only start things he knows for sure he'll finish. I try to explain that in my head, I always think I'll finish all the things I start. I feel quite disappointed when I don't finish them, but I can handle the disappointment; I can't really live without starting new things. This applies to every aspect of my life. The whole "motherhood" problem - that really, truly is an NP-complete optimization problem. How to figure out what meals are the perfect balance of healthy, inexpensive, tasty, and easy to make - how to juggle the ability to cook all the things on time, serve them on time, accommodate the schedules of six other people - etc. Yeah. I am used to starting lots of new projects without ever "finishing" them. Ever. Basically, TLDR: it's time to revamp the system.

So out of curiosity, I read a chapter from Děti z Bullerbynu. It took me about 20 minutes. I had the English copy next to me (by the way, the American edition does not include all the stories, is somewhat abbreviated, and is not nearly as charming as the Czech version somehow. I will try to find the UK edition and ask for that for Christmas. It's out of print.) After some searching, I had found a place where I could print off the stories one at a time and highlight the text. After considerably more searching, I found a PDF version of the book so I could highlight the text and do a word count. 

By the way - as an aside: this is one thing that Czech learning has going for it. Copyright is not really so much of an issue. You can generally very quickly and easily find free PDF or e-pub versions of anything you want to read. You can download movies with Czech dubbing and then splice in the subtitles (either Czech or English). I am very grateful that this is a possibility. I don't even feel bad - there is no possible way for me to purchase those movies and we own them already in English. It is not my fault the only languages included with movies on this side of the pond are French and Spanish. But maybe I'm just justifying my illegal (but not unethical?) activity. Hmm. I am not sure. 

Anyway - I'll just brush those thoughts aside for a bit and try not to think about them - 

So anyway, I read the chapter called Veliký nečas. It has 803 words (well, I copy and pasted from the PDF which was not a perfect solution; some of the words were screwed up). I did not know 59 of them. That is slightly more than 7% of the words. 

What I could do (well, if I could figure it out...but let's just assume that I can) is stick all the words in a corpus-building tool thing that could tag all the different words and count how many lemmas there are - like, instead of counting verbs with different declensions as fully different words (muži and mužem being the same word), I could learn how many unique words there were.

This would be super useful to know because I already noticed that of the 59 words, several of them are repeats. Maybe even about 10 of them. I think some of them are the same word, but to my English language brain, some really do NOT look the same. Like, at all. Wouldn't it be really cool to be able to take my list of 59 unknown words and compare it to the 700 (let's say) -ish unique words, and then get a list of all of the instances/forms that each of my 59 words showed up as? 

Wouldn't it be cool to take my list of 45 (let's say) unique unknown words and then compare them against a bigger, more general corpus of Czech language, to know which ones are the most frequently used? And then from that, wouldn't it be great to just pick 10 of them with which to shove into this really fun feedback loop of creating example sentences, recording them, etc. etc.?

This would only really work if it were something I could do quickly. I guess that once I figure out how to use some of the tools that are already right in front of me, it could be possible? 

And more? 

But yeah. 20 minutes to read a short chapter? 7% rate of words that I don't know? Yeah, this is a much better book for me than Harry Potter. By the way, this does not mean that I can't guess what they know, nor does it mean that I know what the combination of words I do know means together. But hey. It's a start. 

I should remember that I wasn't reading books in French until my fourth year of it. Like, French 1a was 7th grade, French 1b 8th grade, French 2 was 9th grade, and French 3 was 10th grade. That is when I read my first "book" - probably le Petit Prince, I guess. I do not really remember. I read a lot of books (novels, poetry, plays etc.) while living in France, and afterwards as well. Not nearly as many as I bought and sent home and are sitting on my shelves, but...

So I will have to find a way to communicate this to my collaborators. A way that is concise, short, and communicates efficiently/effectively what I want them to do. Also, though it's useful for me to divide my learning into week-chunks, I think it's actually a bit stressful for me. So I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to divide it into sections-of-the-book chunks instead. That way, I can move ahead while I'm waiting for feedback in my amazing feedback cycle of awesomeness. Which I drew on my whiteboard. And I like enough to draw on a poster. And hang with the other Czech posters. I guess I never mentioned this, but my basement (where my office is) is literally surrounded by Czech posters. Pády, zajména, the questions words like kdo, co, koho, čeho...etc. Yeah. Did I mention I am a language teacher?  

A3.10 Meta

Here we are nearing the close of another week, and so it's time for me to write some of my thoughts about my learning.

I am going to start implementing some changes in my learning.

This week I discovered that Harry Potter is not the silver bullet (I wrote golden bullet before, but then later realized the expression uses silver, not gold. Huh. Weird.) which it seemed like it would be for me. When I feel really desperate about finding a solution, I sometimes throw it out into the great nether of the internet and beg. Here was what I begged:

Help me find something that meets these qualifications:

1. There has to be both a Czech and an English print translation.
2. There has to be a Czech audio version that is the SAME as the Czech print version.
3. It has to not be from 100 years ago.
4. It has to be clean.
5. The audio version has to not have fuzzy sound quality.
6. The audio version has to be read naturally.
7. It has to be between $0-30.
8. It would be highly preferable if it were something I already knew in English.
9. It has to be lighthearted and fun.

For more details, keep reading:
1. There are not solid English translations of even 25% (a guess) of the Czech literature that is out there. Not even of the classics. Which is weird, and one of the big motivating factors for me learning Czech. I'll probably never be able to translate a work of fiction into Czech, but I might be able to one day master it enough to translate it into English.
2. The copy of "Proměna" which I have is not the same as the audio version on český rozhlas. I am currently in the process of checking to see if there is a different version for download.
3. Although I do actually like Němcová's writing (I am somewhere around 3/4's through the English translation of Babička), it would be like reading Dickens to learn English. Kinda been there, done that with my first book to read in Czech (Bylo nás pět), and it was a MAJOR STRUGGLE.
4. So there go most of the books by Kundera. Anyway they are mostly in French and then translated to Czech. And I am not throwing him away, but like...
5. Harry Potter a kamen mudrců has extremely terrible audio quality. It is not consistently clear. Sometimes it is almost un-listen-to-able, it is so fuzzy. I cannot listen to it while doing the dishes. Like, at all. Apparently it is probably a recording from the audio cassette tape which was then transferred to CD which was then downloaded and uploaded illegally to ulož.to. And guess what, there is no mp3 version for sale. Weird. And only the first and maybe the second book were even recorded as audiobooks in Czech at all! So saaad!
6. I could listen to General Conference talks in Czech but it is really painful because the voice sounds stressed out - because they ARE stressed out. It is a recording of a translator following the live broadcast. It is not a natural, relaxed reading/performance. And then there's issue number 9. I really love my church. I really love the scriptures. I really love general conference. I think I will die if it's all I ever consume.
7. This is not really much of a limiting factor, but I thought I'd throw it in there.
8. So yeah. Now I'm basically left with options with clumsy English translations, if the translations exist at all.

One thing I've been doing which seems to work pretty well and be pretty satisfying is to download a Disney movie that I already know in English by heart and listen to it in Czech (I do not have to be watching it because I literally have these things memorized because: mom). So far I have watched like, 3 or 4 movies this way. The big, giant bonus is this: Cora likes to watch them in Czech. She also knows exaaaaactly what is going on.

But it doesn't give me the chance to read them. I want to put my Czech learning into a big, fat feedback loop.

I am kind of really sad that Harry Potter is not the golden bullet I thought it would be. No Easy Answers, ye Czech Learning Gods, eh? Like, LITERALLY NONE. uffff

I actually got back some quick, detailed responses about other potential solutions, including a list of books that were recommended that could meet these criterion. They were:

- The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho <-- I haven't read this in English so it misses point #8 (the list is by priority, so I might try this eventually anyway)

- Saturnin by Zdeněk Jirotka <-- I have read this in English. I want to try something new.

- Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien <-- I dated a guy whose opinion I really value and admire. He read all of these books. He described them to me as "literary masturbation." That description has always stayed with me. I have read them all - well, half of the 'Return of the King' - I didn't finish it, much to my husband's horror. Or delight. He teases me about this. I guess some day I will read it. But it's been so long I'll basically have to start over. I liked that they were lighthearted and fun. But you know what? I get REALLY BORED of books with one or two token female characters, none of which are the main protagonists. In fact, it's beyond boredom; it's like, a sheer inability to relate. It's like, I can't really care about it very deeply because it's so unreal. I can't suspend my disbelief. /rant

- The Little Prince - super melancholy book. Obviously I have read this in both English and French. It is not the kind of book to read when one is already trying to dispel the past 9 months worth of ennui and gloom.

- books by Astrid Lindgren --> THIS. I read "The Children of Noisy Village" with my kids. I loved it. Actually, there's an image in that book of a very happy, very loving, very maternal mother which has stuck with me, and which I sometimes try to replicate in my own life. The positive outlook on childhood, the lack of negativity, the joyfulness of it, the silly childhood worries that are so adorable - the fun-ness of reading this book with my kids...all of these factors make this book seem very appealing.

In a different conversation on a different day with a different person, Čapek was recommended.  I bought a book of his short stories in English, found a copy in Czech as both an audio version and a print version. I think I will like it. I guess we will see.

The main criterion, the #0 on the list which I should have mentioned, or thought of, but didn't, is difficulty. How difficult is it? Is it something that I can manage to attack without having to use a dictionary for every fifth word?

The sad fact of the matter is, Harry Potter is still beyond my skill level. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with that. I have read through the first half of the first book, but it takes a lot of effort, patience, time - and I need more small victories. 

I'm not stopping Harry Potter - but I am going to temporarily put the book on "hold." 

* * * 

This week was a little bit busy. I got really involved in a certain project: self-publishing my first book (print, not an e-book - yet). It is a book of poetry. It was a low-stakes, high-rewards project. The point was to be able to get it ready in time to send to people for Christmas. It's not really for them; it's for me. The idea of other people reading my poetry is really satisfying, even though I have pretty low expectations of them actually reading it, and even if they do, actually understanding me better through so doing. But yeah, I guess a piece of it is pure hubristic pride: it's like, the most enormous pat-on-the-back that I could give myself. Beyond that, it's an appropriately distant way to gush my emotions about difficult topics to people that I care about (my friends and family). I guess part of it is the asynchronousness of it. It's like, much, much, much more asynchronous communication than talking, texting, skyping, email, blogging. The gushiness, the word-vomiting - I guess the only really appropriate place for those kinds of things is in writing, and when they have to do with strong feelings, the writing should probably be as far away as possible from the reader, while also maintaining the hope that they might read it. I don't know, I'm just thinking this through as I write it right now. Which is what I usually tend to do; discover my feelings through talking/writing with someone, and if not with someone, then at someone, and if not at someone, then at the Great Void (like this blog). But ugh enough of these somewhat gloomy thoughts.

When January rolls around I want to start a new "semester" of Czech learning. I want to call it "A4." I guess it's just an inside joke with myself; I guess I am probably at some point going to be able to admit to myself that I am well beyond an A2 level. It is really hard for me to judge that for myself. I am definitely in the obnoxious "silent period" of my Czech, where I understand about 500x more than I can say. This is a hard place to be, but it's much better than where I used to be, and I definitely know it'll pass if I keep at it. 

The other problem is that there are lots of potholes in my learning. And anyway, a linear model describing language proficiency is pretty short-sighted at best and misleading at worst. That's why I'm going to call it A4, I guess.

* * * 

In January I will be reading the New Testament with my family, and everybody else in my church. I'm very close to finishing reading the Book of Mormon in Czech. When I finish it, it will be the second book for me to have read all the way through in Czech, and the first one completely out loud. 

I am going to read the New Testament in Czech. I would very much like to find the kind of Bible that my Czech ancestors would have known. I will have to remember to ask one of my Czech friends if they could possibly dig something like that up for me. Something highlightable that isn't 200 years old and going to crumble into pieces when I turn the pages. It would be deeply meaningful for me to study the words of the New Testament in Czech, to see the differences and similarities, and especially for me to glimpse what my ancestors might have understood - what their faith may have been. I guess I have three weeks or so to try to find this book. Or perhaps it will include a missal or something like that. I don't know. 

* * *

But the scriptures are on the very extreme end of difficult. What I really need - and NOW - are shorter books, and especially ones that are not too difficult. So yeah, Astrid Lindgren's Děti z Bullerbynu is just about perfect.  Ridiculously short. Simple. I've read it.

Added bonus: the reader is a woman. How I long to hear more women's voices speaking Czech. 

I have not really decided yet if I will try to to slough through the next few chapters of Harry Potter anyway before I transition to A4. There are 17 total chapters and I'm in chapter 9. I kind of think...well...I kind of think I need a change. 

I just spent the last half hour trying to find the text of Děti z Bullerbynu online but I could not find it. The enormous advantage to having it available as a PDF is that I would have the text in a format that I could copy and paste. Well, I could not find the whole thing, so I just went ahead and bought the book. It comes out to be on the higher end for what I would pay for a book (something like $35 total including shipping), especially considering that the book for me in English is much less expensive. But. I think it will be good for me. I can get a start on at least 4 pages of it on this site. I am not sure how I want to go about reading it; like, will I still try to engage my Czech collaborators in the same way? I don't know. 

* * *

Speaking of my Czech collaborators, I have been feeling really frustrated about this situation recently. I feel like there are a lot of people who are willing to help me, and if I have extremely specific tasks to point them to, they can handle it, but for whatever reason, they are kind of unable to go beyond those few mere tasks. It is frustrating to be in this situation. It's like, trying to take a class without a teacher. I don't know where the holes are. I am just trying to fill them in as best I can.

And I have to somehow find a way to navigate around the individual needs, whims, feelings, frustrations, passions - etc. - of all these collaborators. I certainly understand that it's too much to expect that teaching me Czech will suddenly become somebody's hobby. But it sure is frustrating to try to deal with, on the other hand. 

I know that the reason why I enjoy learning languages is because I like to talk - about EVERYTHING. Language is just the transparent thing, the vehicle, to get the information across. I am interested in genetic genealogy. I am interested in child psychology. I am interested in theatre. I am interested in programming. I am interested in computational linguistics, which is like some kind of CRAZY AMAZING meta-language special category. I like all these things. I really love the chance to escape talking about the mundaneness of my daily life, schedule, routine, etc. I have lived the same day over and over for the past ten years. It's generally a very good day, too! It's just, I love being able to talk about new things. New people, new ideas, new places. 

So, that all said, the reason I am learning Czech goes a bit beyond finding and exploring an intensely interesting, personal world of people and ideas. Or rather, it's exactly that, but with the added factor that the people and ideas I want to learn about are dead. Like, I want to read the words written a hundred years ago about my Czechs. It's very important to me. I felt an enormous amount of satisfaction by translating a piece of an article that one of them wrote. I will need to continue to do that.

* * *

I will need to figure out a way to connect with the collaborators I have which is useful for me, not very difficult for them, and includes me being able to give them concise, short instructions/tasks on how they can help me.

I will need to figure out a way to make my learning be easier, and I think picking a different book will be a very big help in that regard. I need to put my learning into a loop. I need to make a list of movies for Danny to download for me in Czech. 

Yeah, and on top of all of that, I need to figure out a way to use a corpus to help me learn this language. First step in that regard is figuring out how to use the #*(% thing in the first place. I am kind of struggling with that. The MOOC I am taking (by the way, I ended up purchasing it because the time ran out and I really want to finish it) about corpus ling is really great, but I am stuck in the middle of trying to slough through the really dry academic articles. I am way ahead on listening to the lectures. But the reading - it's always the reading that gets me down. I wish there were a person to sit here and read them aloud to me. Somehow it's a lot easier for me to understand something when I hear it than when I read it. But that isn't a possibility.

* * *

In the end, although I've had a pretty productive Czech week, I still feel a little bit melancholy about my progress, goals, strategies, etc. I can't quite put the finger on why that is. Maybe it's the relationships part. I don't know. 

A3.9 testy

So my "tests" were pretty good this week. As usual, I planned on giving myself too many. I only took one of the three quizlet tests which I had originally planned.

Eventually I will give myself the non-multiple choice tests. Obviously, taking a written test will be much more difficult and meaningful. But I'm going to start small.

The tests pretty much have all the words from that week - words that I picked up from a huge variety of contexts.

I am pretty surprised that merely by listening to about 25-28 sentences over and over and over and over and over I am able to pick up most of the other words, as well.

So yeah. Here's the progress.

A3.9 čtení, HP 1.8 „Co se děje? Proč si to všecko nezapisujete?"

A3.9 mluvení

Být trochu nastydlý znamená asi mít trochu rýmu. Ještě nevím, jaký je rozdíl.

Is Zapištěl to squeal or to squeak?

Možná obojí?

* * *

What is a matroš exactly?

Crap. It means DRUGS. What!

materiál

matroš

drugs

marijuana : tráva, grass

to je teda matroš, divné materiál

* * *

Nashle odpoledne bylo poslední co řekl.

I guess this means something like “see you this afternoon?”

Ha! So it DOES.

setkání : shledání

“na slyšenou” je na rádiu

What is the difference between krb and oheň?

co to tom hoří

krb je místo

Vý máte krbovou vlošku, ne krb.

To roztaje

the snow melts

Vánice není Vánoce

* * *

MEANING OF NENADRŽUJE

nadržuje is to favor someone

so, nenadržovat is to not favor someone

Předstíraly, že je to nezajímá, ale oči jim hořely.

from tears? What?

Hořely znamená, že je to zajimalo

frnák : WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

za frňák

Frňák je expresivní slovo pro jednu část obličeje.

který část? Pusa?

NE - Nos!

How strong is the word syčák?

Not that strong. Syčák je člověk, který něco udělal schválně a ty se na něj třeba zlobíš.

* * *

Jaký je rozdíl mezi “vzpomenout si” a “pamatovat si”?

pamatovat si : to bear in mind, to keep in mind

vzpomenout si : to recall, to remember

1. Jdi koupit do obchodu kuře, mléko, housky a vejce. Budeš si to pamatovat?

2. Jakou stranu máme číst? Nemůžu si vzpomenout.

Sometimes is possible use both.

Vzpomínáš na ty krásné časy?

Pamatuješ ty krásné časy.

Vzpomínat si. You search the information, event, ideas (etc.) in your memory.

Pamatovat si. You have it in your memory. You can remember without problems. You know it, you don't need search the information, event, ideas (etc.) in your memory.

* * *

ať a až - jaký je rozdíl? → different words, can lead to the same meaning.

Stáhla jsem si dva ebooky

Why is it reflexive?

Because you are doing it for yourself. You pretty much hardly ever download something for someone else, I guess.

* * *

Přát a přejit jsou úplně jiné sloveso.

Nemůžeš říct, “hvězdy nejsou zarovnané,” v češtině. Můžeš říct “hvězdy tomu nepřejí.”

Přát si není stejně jako přát někomu něco. Přát někomu něco je asi zastaralé. Je úplně stejně v angličtině.

Spála a spala nejsou stejně vůbec. Spála je nemoc, ala jsem spala v noci. Někde je tam báseň…

Očkování možná nemá stejný kořen “čekat” ani “čočka”. Ale vypadají podobně. Očkování je když dostaneš injekci proti necomi.

Dostatečně neznamená statečně. Dostatečně je dost. Lva je statečný.

Kousek může popsat místo které je blízko.

Čeština má hodně příslovcí. Tak...můžeš i říct, že něco je podobně daleko. Neřekneš “podobně dálka.”

Protože téma je přejaté slovo, je také rodu středního.

Rozdíl mezi “snad” a “možná” je, že i když obojí znamená nejistotu, “snad” může také znamenat třeba nadějnost.

Snad ji najdu // možná ji zkusím najít. ← to je ten rozdíl v akci.

Nesnaším ta ukazovací zájmena. UFFFFFFFFFFFFF

v tomto tomto tomto tomto filmu

entuziatický nápad, ale entuziastičtí lidi i psi i muži

Rozrušit někoho/něco.

Potkali jsme ji náhodou, ale setkali jsme se ní plánovaně.

* * *

ve sporáčku

Jak se mají koně? Hladově

ve vyběhu

přilež

Nech to ležet

nech to být

řešit

Nech to být

Let it be song by the Beatles

* * *

povolíš, dovolíš

nechám ho jet do Prahy, podlě mě není tak dobrý nápad

je tam zápor

nenechávej

chávej neexistuje

nechám se narust knír.

nalekovát nechty

fotr jako tato

fatřík

Duber : herečká která propůjčila hlas

dětské, infantilné

nejsou penize

zlevnit: price goes down to

We saw on the Friday

ochodníci

amateur vs. volunteers

script

act is not play

use in a sentence

“dívčí válka”

comedy

fun for natives

staré pověstí české, Jurásek

království není královna, duh...

to se mám, co!

si : for myself

10 Things I Hate About You : good Czech dubbing

Shrek every part has good dubbing as well

sedmero krkavců - downloaded. It was said to be good for kids. But I guess I will try to find out if that really is true.

A3.9 Meta

This was a pretty good Czech studying week, though I really struggled with some migraines. II really think they are migraines because sometimes I'll close my eyes because the light seems to enhance the pain somehow and everything will go black - like extra black, blacker than normal. I think it's super weird. But it's probably just a hormonal thing. I hope that my body will quickly adjust to being postpartum. It's only been about three months, so I should be a little bit patient with myself.

This is the week that I made some copy Quizlet sets for me to record myself saying the sentences in the exact same way as my collaborators. I think if they could see me listening, practicing, and recording these sentences, they would be...well, they would be completely filled with Fremdschämen (sp?), that's what they would be. But it is nesmířně helpful. Possibly one of the most helpful things I have done all week.

Here are my observations about it:
- a lot of phonemes are pronounced differently depending on where they fall in a word. Like ch in jejích is not at all the same as ch in všichni.

- It is a lot easier to remember sentences as a whole. But there is definitely a magic point at which it is too long to easily recall. I need to make sure to pick shortish sentences for now.

- It was especially useful for me when my collaborators said the sentences as naturally as possible, even it meant there was slightly less emotion in the sentence.

- My kids listened to these recordings with me. "Oh, that's what Czech is supposed to sound like? It's so...monotone." That's what my daughter said. Hahaha, I can just imagine how that will make Tom, who recorded the set she heard, laugh.

- One of my husband's friends developed an L2 computer test using voice recognition. His theory is something about how we remember chunks of words in syllables, not independently. He kind of dumbed down the theory to me, and there were eight children under the age of nine running around when he was saying it, so I am not exactly sure what he's talking about. But yeah. Our brains remember chunks, and they aren't necessarily chunked by the word. Like, I have this phrase running through my head now, "všiml jsem si..." - and it is very useful.

- On a related note, this would explain the exact reason why I have really hard time remembering the meaning of "bychom." The phoneme "chom" (okay, it's actually hom, but close enough) is the Arabic* word for third person plural "they." So that's really difficult for me to assign it to "we." Like, "měli bychom" in Czech is "we should" but I always think of it as "they should" because in Czechabic (?!) it kind of breaks down that way: měli (some kind of plural of have) by (some kind of conditional past marker) ch/hom (subject pronoun they). I wonder if this is even comprehensible to anybody else reading this - but I don't have to worry too much, since nobody reads it anyway :-) It will be useful a couple years down the road when I go to write the ultimate Czech as a Fourth Language Textbook. I won't call it that. It will be something like Czech for English Speakers. But I need to suppress that urge with all my might; it's not useful to think about.

- Notice that I tried to make my example sentences from HP 1.8 (which have not been corrected yet; I am quite sure there are errors) follow the patterns in the example sentences that were recorded on Quizlet from HP 1.3.

I hung out with a friend this week to help her make some Christmas decorations for our ward Christmas party. Her other friend was there and my friend introduced me. She said this about me, "Yeah! She's teaching herself Czech." I kind of don't know how I feel about that characterization. I think it's not quite accurate. I know I put a ton of effort into Czech. But it's like, hand in hand with the effort to have authentic relationships with the Czech people who are teaching it to me. They are not really separable. And I would never be able to learn Czech if it weren't for these people. I wish that we did not live so far away. I had to unfollow one of my friend's facebook feeds - I like her a lot, she's perfectly nice. But her husband's new job takes him to Prague about 4x/year, and she got to go with them this time. It was not very fun to see all the photos. I guess people might feel a bit like that about me the handful of times I will ever get to go there in my life, when I post things. But it's dumb to think about it that way; I guess globalization means the world is a lot smaller.


*Levantine dialect, which isn't in any online translator, and which I learned alongside with MSA/Fusha. I definitely never mastered MSA because it was not spoken language and I got really bored with reading about explosions and al umum el mota7da - I did reach an advanced mid level of speaking Levantine dialect once upon a time, though it's very rusty now.

A3.9 HP 1.8 příklady

I guess that my sentences probably have some significant errors which I will need to correct. I will try to post the corrections next week.

1.8 Učitel lektvarů

1.      Sám se totiž soustřeďoval na to, aby našel učebnu, kam má jít.

 Soustřeďoval na tom místě polovinu své armády.

Soustřeďoval se raději na důležitější věci.

Moje ošklivost jí nevadí. Ženy jako Marie se to takového povrchního podrobnosti nesoustřeďovala.

2.                  V Bradavicích bylo sto čtyřicet dva schodišť.

 Největší zábava je sledovat ho padat ze schodišť.

Všichni chodili na dlouhém schodišti.

3.                  Byly tam dveře, které se neotevřely, pokud jste je o to zdvořile nepožádali nebo jste se jich nedotkli na jediném správném místě, a dveře, které vůbec nebyly dveře, nýbrž pevné zdi, a ty to jen předstíraly.

 Předstíraly, že je to nezajímá, ale oči jim hořely.

Holka předstírala, že jí nebyl problém.

4.                   „DRŽÍM TĚ ZA FRŇÁK!”

Takový frňák může stát i několik frntisíc korun.

Jeho teta měla takový špičatý frňák.

5.                  Ten znal tajné chodby po celé škole líp než kdo jiný (snad s výjimkou dvojčat Weasleyových) a dokázal se objevit stejně nenadále jako duchové.

Dorazil nenadále uprostřed zimy a zdržel se až do dubna.

Stalo se to tak nenadále, trvalo to jen několik vteřin.

6.                  Jednou usnul před krbem ve sborovně, a když příštího dne ráno vstal a šel na hodinu, své tělo tam nechal.

Ve sborovně právě probíhala porada.

Ve sborovně je hodně knih.

7.                  Na začátku první hodiny si udělal seznam studentů, a když se dostal k Harryho jménu, vzrušeně zapištěl a zmizel jim z očí.

Myšák ještě zapištěl a zmizel v díře.

Holky vždycky zapiští, když tady jsem.

8.                  „Každý, kdo by si při mých hodinách chtěl nějak zahrávat, půjde a už se nevrátí. Berte to jako první a poslední varování.”

 Nedbal varování a vyrazil do tmy.

Ze zbytečného varování už se neobtěžuj.

9.                  Poté co si zapsali spoustu složitých pokynů, dostal každý zápalku, aby se pokusili udělat z ní jehlu.

Měl lžičku, měl matroš, a zase neměl jehlu.

Only a very long time later did I realize that sentence is about drugs. Augh...SkELL, you really let me down!

Jen si vezmu jehla, a hned šiju.

10.              A všichni se museli naučit tolika věcem, že dokonce ani takoví jako Ron neměli nijak velký předstih.

Špatně seřízený předstih motoru může být příčinou vysoké spotřeby.

Člověk to může trochu měnit s předstihem .

Doručit vše na čas je předstihem Amazonu.

11.              „Škoda že profesorka McGonagallová zase nenadržuje nám,” řekl Harry.

 Komise došla k závěru, že nikomu se nenadržuje.

A rozhodně tomu autu nenadržuje , spíše naopak.

Na filmu je hlavně sympatické, že nikomu nenadržuje.

Snad v žádném státě se tak nenadržuje těmto lidem, jako u nás.

...

12.              „Dobrá, tak nashle odpoledne” a poslal s ním Hedviku zase pryč.

 Nashle odpoledne bylo poslední co řekl.

Ať si ti lépe, a nashle odpoledne!

13.              Draco Malfoy a jeho přítelíčkové Crabbe a Goyle si zakryli ústa dlaněmi a hihňali se.

Marně se pokoušel mouchu zabít dlaněmi.

Au! Přibouchl jsem si dlaň do dveří!

14.              Stejně jako profesorka McGonagallová si i Snape dovedl bez námahy udržet ve třídě ticho.

Dovedl si zavázat tkaničky sám.

Chceš mi tvrdit, že jsi si nedovedl v noci vůbec spát?

15.              „Co získám, když přidám rozdrcený kořen asfodelu k výluhu z pelyňku?”

Rozdrcený asfalt se přimíchá do stroje a ze směsi vznikne nová silnice.

A já jsem ležel na podlaze jako rozdrcený brouk.

Chatřč, ve které se skryli byla rozdrcená z balvanu.

16.              Snažil se nevidět Malfoye, Crabbeho a Goyla, kteří se svíjeli smíchy.

Svíjeli se v křeči jako hadi a nikdo jim nepomohl.

 Zkusili mi dotknout, ale jsem se svíjeli v bolesti.

17.              Přecházel po místnosti ve svém dlouhém černém plášti, díval se, jak odvažují sušené kopřivy a rozdrcené hadí zuby, a našel něco špatného málem na každém s výjimkou Malfoye, který mu zřejmě padl do oka.

Našel v trávě hadí kůži a za chvíli s ní pelášil domů.

Je ohromná, má velká křídla a hadí tělo.

...

18.              Jakmile Harry zaklepal, ozvalo se zevnitř divoké škrábání a hromový štěkot.

 Štěkot tak malého psa připomínal spíše pokličku na hrnci.

Psí štěkot jsem ještě tu a tam zaslechl.

Všichni psi májí své vlastní štěkot.

19.              Od stropu viseli bažanti a šunky, v měděné konvici na otevřeném ohni vřela voda a v koutě stála mohutná postel s pokrývkou, sešitou z malých kousků.

 Z kousku sádla a brambor vykouzlila výtečnou polévku.

Nechutnala jsem ani kousek koláče!

20.              Tesák si opřel hlavu Harrymu o koleno a celého ho poslintal.

Poslintal si triko, kalhoty a nakonec i boty.

Fuj. Poslintal si pes na mojí ruku.

21.              Harryho i Rona velice potěšilo, když Hagrid nazval Filche “ten syčák starej.”

 Syčák jeden, až ho chytím roztrhnu ho na pět menších.

Byl to takový směšný syčák.