How's Your Day? November 2017

Mornin' Rich.

 

Mornin' Steve! How's the coffee today?
I'm working on some freshly ground "Long Night Out" from Virginia Commonwealth Roasters.

Kijk naar de mooie uil (@macaronus @Eeyore) // Look at the pretty owl.

For those not familiar with Duolingo, The Golden Owl means that I've just completed version 2.0 of the Dutch lessons.

 

Way to go! Congrats!!

Coffee's great. Waiting for the weekend to spoil myself with some Dirigo Blue Kenya.

 

Gefeliciteerd!

Hoeveel niveaus zijn er nog?

Er is een leuke website waarop je dagelijks kleine taaltestjes kunt maken; ik ben daar ook op geabonneerd:

beterspellen.nl

Ik probeer iedere dag de tests voor Nederlands, Engels en Duits te maken. Je kunt kiezen uit drie niveaus.

Edit: leuk is ook dat bij elke vraag een korte uitleg wordt gegeven over het goede antwoord.


--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

Thanks!

Dank je wel!

Nu, zijn er tenminste 120 of 123 bladen/lessen en veel nieuwe woorden.

Bedankt voor de website. Ik zal ernaast kijken. Ik wil graag een website waarop ik kan mijn vloeiendheid testen.

 

Let's continue in English for the rest of the forum (otherwise please send me a PM ).

Those sites ("Beter Spellen", "Beter Engels", and such) are focused on common language mistakes. There are three levels; my guess is that the second level would be appropriate for you).

Here is an example of the 2nd level:



--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

Thanks, I just joined and just took that test. I got 75% because I didn't know that Ramadan is not capitalized. But, I also appreciated (and understood) the explanation they gave.

 

@richgem I am doing the French Duolingo now, to refresh my skills

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

Bonne chance! (And with the exception of "filet mignon" that about covers my French knowledge.)

 

Congratz! Especially from Bertie:

Thanks for the correct spelling! Unlike others:

 

@richgem @macaronus I got my Dutch owl Which of course is cheating, but I am impressed by the breadth of topics you have to master!

 

Goed gedaan!

I will say that I've not mastered many of those topics. But, I think that I have a fairly good grasp of the grammar (at least to recognize it). My main lack, aside from almost no practice speaking it, is vocabulary. I would guess that I'm probably at low secondary school level with that. My other downfalls are the common ones, de/het and word order. In any case, at least I'm at a point where, with a dictionary, I can read a Dutch webpage with some understanding and a children's book fairly easily. (I have a couple of regular e-books which are very slow going due to a lot of dictionary work.)

Zoals men zegt, oefening baart kunst.
(practice makes perfect)

 

I'm not much at Dutch, but I did study Swedish on Halloween.

 

That reminds me of a story, which happened on one of my very few visits to the USA, about twenty years ago

I was in Orange County, and met a guy there in the bus (BTW, I was amazed how good the public transport there was). When he asked me where I was from, I said "Amsterdam" (which technically is not true, but I guessed it would be the only Dutch city he might know), "in Holland". And after, I think, a few seconds of silence, he responded "Yeah, Holland ... I have heard of that! Isn't that in Sweden?"

 

@richgem do you also use the Tinycards app?

In general, who else is using Duolingo to (re)learn a foreign language?

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

November is off to a good start. On Wed. We went shopping for some new cookware- always fun for us. Yesterday, we used it to make a bacon (from Amish farms) & egg breakfast. Then, we went out & got my husband’s bow restrung. After that, of course, we went for a shoot.

 

But, no surprise. Americans do not learn geography (as in many secondary school kids canNOT even locate US or Canada on a world map). If you had said "The Netherlands" he would have been even more mystified.

I was using memrise with Dutch 1.0 and that was helpful. I fooled around with tinycards, which I think has not been updated yet, and found that I liked memrise more.

I've also used Duo to brush up on my Italian which I studied for 6 years in school.

edit: @Eeyore just out of curiosity, what city do you live in? (It's no problem if you don't want to say.)

 

Ah well, many Dutch people probably also cannot name more than ten US states (and probably can only find Texas, Florida, and California on a map) ... I must admit that I would struggle with all those Midwestern states as well (where's Nebraska relative to Kansas? ).

I don't feel bad when they cannot find a small country like the Netherlands; it would be worse when they can't find India or Brazil, for instance Or Australia!

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

The surprising thing to me is that the Canadians are taught the US states (and can find most of them) whereas we are never taught the Canadian Provinces AND can't find our own states (except the obvious ones). I suppose there are more important things to worry about learning, but it would be nice if most students at least had a general idea where things/countries are in the world. And at least to know a general location for the states.