500 hrs by May

[bombobuffoon]

Lots of language islands creation with the help of ChatGPT. And also started working on improvisational speech. Like music, improvisation is a bit of a party trick. Its fake. It relies heavily on premade patterns. Very few musicians can truly improvise. So I take some comfort from this, if I have some building blocks, then I can form somewhat coherent speech.

I don't really agree that practicing broken speech is the way forward. That approach has not served me well, so I think this is the next approach to take.

So also my listening skills are shocking. I need to do more transcription.

Dreaming Finnish


This is the Finnish equivalent to Dreaming Spanish. A CI based course. I have the full paid course, and I intend write a review at some point.
I want the review to be as constructive as possible so I am taking my time over it.

I listened first time and got nothing so I did a transcription, (3 passes with lots of rewinding) and got chatgpt to ask me some questions. Not bad, I got the general gist although the subject matter is bit banal.

[bombobuffoon]

More mind tricks

Did some garden work and needed supplies so popped out to the jaw droppingly expensive K-Rauta. Anyway at the kassa the lady asks something in a way I have never been asked before, so I answer in English a bit on auto pilot and she continues in Finnish. Maybe "thats it" can sound a bit like "se siit"

That's interesting because I realized I actually don't even usually fully understand English speakers, its like my brain takes a best guess and I don't even realize the brain is filling in the blanks with anticipated speech.

Another mind bender:- I was listening to the CI course and I heard "käytetää", and of course I know the word and the grammar of the passive form, but yet, how can I explain this....I never internalized it? If it came up in text I'd be able to read it but in audio my ears would not give it the explanation my brain knows.

And as the proverb for the want of a nail goes understanding a paragraph can depend on sentence can depend on a single word, which in turn can depend on a single letter. And so the meaning of the speech was unlocked.

Yet this was all heavily grammar dependent. Ironic that I have made a little breakthrough on a word not with CI, but with grammar on a CI course. A combination of both, I needed both.

And the CI course slates grammar, with some misleading arguments, that's how it sells the course "its not your fault" type thing. (I'll get into that later with my review piece).

[daegga]

Can you share the link to dreaming Finnish? A google search did not reveal anything.

[bombobuffoon]

Can you share the link to dreaming Finnish? A google search did not reveal anything.

Its not actually called Dreaming Finnish, but its sort of in the style of Dreaming Spanish, as in its a CI based course for Finnish. As I said I will try to write a constructive review at some point.

https://www.learnfinnished.com/

That is the paid course, but there is a great deal of free content on the youtube channel.

[bombobuffoon]

Had a bit of live listening at the kids new school. Nothing can really prepare you for how people speak, its as if a whirlwind rips around your ears and you left pondering words that zipped by three seconds ago.

Indeed I picked up a great deal of what was said this time, however there was one word which I am sure I know was said but I could not pick up it quickly enough, had to abandon trying to remember it and just keep listening. She was talking about the schools new daily schedule items. But I really wish I could remember that word.

As always I have been doing more listening practice and language islands.



I love this channel. I wish there were more like it. This is Finnish language gold right here.

She is a high energy speaker of maybe average to slightly quicker speech and she always does all these word shortcuts. Like blending several words into one as I have highlighted.

I have studied some of her videos and can understand them almost entirely. However the new ones confound me and I have to study them, with listen, check, listen, check, etc.

[bombobuffoon]

I stumbled upon the comic book section in the library.

I had been looking in the wrong place all this time. Turns out theres a very long and large shelf full of comics.

This was very exciting to me as I love hand drawn art, particularly retro comics, and French comics particularly.

Not many French comics get translated to English but they do get translated to Finnish, from what I saw today.



A post apocalypse visual novel. Looking forward to this one.

[bombobuffoon]

[bombobuffoon]

Had another "conversation". A bit of a difficult topic I guess. Though I am quite disappointed I couldn't handle it.

From what I could tell there was a potential complaint with some water draining, into a neighbouring property. Someone wanting some answers, and maybe looking to blame someone. That kind of vibe.

Now I don't know how the drainage systems work even in English so I had a lot of trouble coming any coherent sentences about water flow, maintenance, and so on apart from "En mä tiiä".

So I did not understand the important parts of the conversation. This was a really difficult one to be fair. I would say a failure of information exchange. So yeah very much still an A1 in ability despite all the language islands, CI, etc etc.

[bombobuffoon]

I did some playing around with ChatGPT. Perhaps some nerds can advise me here but I really like graded readers.

I found a website that gives graded readers and the option to hide or show the sentence. I asked ChatGPT to make an A2 level story, with english translation. Put the story into html and put into a table with show hide each row.

[tiia]

Had another "conversation". A bit of a difficult topic I guess. Though I am quite disappointed I couldn't handle it.

From what I could tell there was a potential complaint with some water draining, into a neighbouring property. Someone wanting some answers, and maybe looking to blame someone. That kind of vibe.

Now I don't know how the drainage systems work even in English so I had a lot of trouble coming any coherent sentences about water flow, maintenance, and so on apart from "En mä tiiä".

So I did not understand the important parts of the conversation. This was a really difficult one to be fair. I would say a failure of information exchange. So yeah very much still an A1 in ability despite all the language islands, CI, etc etc.

As this may be (close to) what I do as a profession, here some words that may help you the next time:

salaoja(putki) - drainage pipes (those pipes with holes that go around your foundations. Some (older) houses may not have them.)
sadevesi - rain water
vesijohto - water supply pipe (for drinking water)
viemäri - sewer
hulevesi - (surface) run-off (I'm too lazy to search for the best English translation. Many finns don't know that word, so you're rather unlikely to hear this one)
pohjavesi - ground water

As a general rule of thumb, rain water from your property should not flow to your neighbours property. (Though this is not always possible etc.)

For translating technical terms, I recommend using TEPA.