FINALLY I got my Turkish TV turned off and HOTBIRD is coming through loud and clear. After retuning my satbox I found I had 1300 new channels. Minus the encrypted ones there are still about 700. I spent ages pruning these down to about 220. 150 of these are in Italian. But I get a load in German, English and French too. There are some really bizarre things on that satellite. Like a Buddhist channel in with Thai priests reading endless tracts in Pali. Thai gameshows (on another channel). Italian señoritas jiggling their bare mammaries at midday. There was a really manic woman on yesterday at about 1pm vigorously fanning her private parts while taking calls on two separate phones. I try and escape but she's on five consecutive channels! I'm sure that woman was mentally ill or on drugs (or both).Oh talking about drugged-out mentally ill sex workers, I met my old housemate LAUNDRETTA at the bus stop. Smashed out of her brains on vodka. She has a massive scar across her forehead where she crashed her car during a drunken psychotic episode. She said she's now been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (quelle surprise) and some kind of psychosis. She's on 750mg quetiapine (Seroquel). I'm only on 300. I told her about my manic episode when the dryers were all talking to me down the laundrette and she laughed and laughed at that. I don't know what she's doing now but she's not doing well. Poor lass.
I'm doing really well at my Spanish. I'm nearly a third of the way through the Linguaphone course. They don't seem to know Linguaphone in America but it's basically four books and nine CDs and you learn a vocabulary of 2000 words+. To draw a comparison, Pimsleur only teaches you a few hundred words. I've been watching the news in Spanish and with Spanish subtitles can just about follow what they're going on about. I've got so far into this Spanish I started worrying about what I'd do once the course ran out. So I've already invested in Italian. I want to learn both, but am avoiding all those Italian TV channels, which will only confuse me. I've been reading ¡Hola! magazine with the aid of my trusty Collins Gem dictionary. I'm not feeling too depressed these days... (famous last words, I know!)
O cripes I've got to go ~ about to be timed out.
Hope you're all well... Hasta la vista, baby!
Well done on learning the Spanish. My boss lady won a 9-day trip from Barcelona to Madrid on a flash Trafalgar tour! She is going in June. She wants to know how to say "Where is the toilet?" in Spanish!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd she won that by watching endless Spanish movies on satellite T.V. (we call it 'Sky') and entering keywords on their website. So maybe all those T. V. channels you have could even prove useful.
And P. S. Glad you feeling happier.
Kiwigirl
We have Rosetta Stone here. Maybe that is worldwide as a language learning system. Sounds as if you are doing well. I think that total immersion is really the best way to truly learn a language. But that sure takes time. Adios, mi amigo!
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to learn Italian with Pimsleur and find myself shouting at the 'actors', 'ay ay, and why is your husband out with his wife?'And things like that. But I struggle to learn even a few words - or rather to remember them. i'm old, y'see.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you're doing really well with the Spanish. :)
ReplyDeleteWell done, Gleds. I'm sorry I didn't get over to wish you a happy Easter but I am going through a very difficult time at the moment.
ReplyDeleteKIWI: Where are the toilets is (I think) ¿donde estan los servicios? Yeah I only get 4 Spanish tV channels but over 100 in Italian. Which really made me want to speak Italian just so I could understand them. Also I get gerzillions in Arabic, Russian, Polish and Persian... I even get 3 channels in Thai and 1 in Vietnamese. Very cosmopolitan!!
ReplyDeleteSYD: that's why I'm so obsessed with foreign tv ~~ nearest you can get to total immersion without leaving the country!
LIZ: I think I would find it VERY hard to learn very much of a foreign language without writing anything down! Well I'm on 18 out of 30 on this Linguaphone and I CAN speak a bit so SOMETHING has worked...
AKELAMALU: ¡si!
WELSHCAKES: I hope you're OK and that things are all right soon. I saw Simi's lookalike on the bus yesterday... VERY cute indeed. Though I need a huge attack dog, not a cute terrier... which I shall explain later...