Crazy language learning experiments

General discussion about learning languages
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Steve
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby Steve » Wed May 26, 2021 3:38 am

einzelne wrote: Bilingual texts have been with us for centuries if not millennia. They proved to be very effective and you could easily find interlinear translations for Greek and Latin texts a century ago. It still a mystery for me why classic departments still treat reading Greek as some kind of crossword puzzle.


In addition, there are some audio recordings (e.g. on Librivox) of a few of the better known classics to allow for listening as well. While my focus is on Spanish right now, I've been slowly working through the Anabasis with a combination of an online out-of-copyright interlinear from 1859 or so, the Loeb series parallel text printed book, and audio from Librivox.

In my mind, there is little reason for not making some text with an interlinear and audio an important part of a course. I think one of the biggest detriments to language learning in western education is the undue influence of scientific management ideology that few people question. Learning is treated as an assembly line where everything is broken down into small easy steps that are then easily tested for quality via quizzes and exams covering scheduled memorization. Reading Latin or Greek is seen as the reward after having spent months to years "mastering" thousands of small individual facts (e.g. vocabulary lists, paradigm tables, grammatical facts) to prepare oneself to be able to read. If a student can't pick up a text and read it, it's because they haven't worked hard enough memorizing things. As long as grading is based on the number of correct responses on quizzes and tests of scheduled memory items, the system is forcing students and teachers to spend most of their time and effort on "how to better rote memorize facts to pass tests" rather than figuring out how to best use interlinears, texts, audios, and reference materials to develop actual reading skills.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby IronMike » Fri May 28, 2021 7:45 pm

Andrei's story might qualify.

At the time, at my university knowing English well was cool. Being able to read an English-language book or a book translated into English without a dictionary was extraordinary. We always adored professors with rich English vocabulary and the most native-sounding pronunciation. Those were the signs of great mastery achieved through perseverance and determination by people who spent most of their lives behind the Iron Curtain. So, there was this professor speaking fluent English who was going to talk about literature not originally written in English, which he must have read in translation. I still remember the moment when he distributed photocopies of Garcia Lorca’s poems with the English translation facing the Spanish original. And then something incredible happened: he told us to follow the translation while he was reading out the poems in Spanish. I was astounded. I had never experienced anything like that before.


He now reads 5 or 6 languages besides his native Russian, IIRC.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby Ug_Caveman » Mon May 31, 2021 9:11 pm

I'm not so sure it would count as "crazy", but I did experiment with Assimil:

Instead of completing 50 lessons passively then starting an active wave, I broke the course down into sections. As the Dutch course has 84 lessons, it broke down nicely into groups of 21.

I completed the first week passively, then immediately started an active wave - taking a total of 28 days to complete each section.

I feel like it worked quite well, but I don't have any experience to compare it to.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby BOLIO » Thu Sep 16, 2021 2:52 pm

leosmith wrote:
t123 wrote:For the curious, here is his first conversation in Mandarin after 2000 hours of listening.

For a first conversation, this is very good. But 2000 hours - that would definitely qualify as crazy to me. After 2000 hours most people, myself included, have a good base in all the skills, and provided they practice it, would be conversing much better than this.

Before I started to learn Mandarin, the theory that one should have a silent period lasting hundreds of hours was on fire. The proponents claimed that one would never achieve decent pronunciation without doing this (ALG was cited, and later debunked imo). My point is their main argument was about achieving great pronunciation.

The speaker in the link shows good listening skills, but only slightly above average pronunciation for a first conversation for a westerner. I'm not saying that all he was after was pronunciation, but it does indicate that a long silent period does not guarantee good pronunciation. Nothing does, really.

I believe to maximize your pronunciation potential you should learn it in the very beginning, and keep on reinforcing it. If good pronunciation is your goal, then learn phoneme, word and finally sentence level pronunciation before you do anything else.


I hope this is okay to put here.

I read your Polydog post on Mandarin a couple of years ago and it helped my Spanish studies. Thx.


A question for you. I have started Mandarin and right now I am in the middle of a 100 hour “Iversen Bloodhound “ session or trying to parse and periodically chorusing the words without any concern for understanding. I enjoy it.

I am doing this before trying to learn radicals or pinyin. After I have completed this, do I concentrate on learning the correct pinyin sounds or the correct radical sounds?

Pinyin then radicals?


Also, my self proposed next step after learning the pinyin and / or radicals is Assimil. I would do Assimil much more thoroughly than I did with Spanish.

Listen dialogue/ listen while reading translation/ listen while following Mandarin. Translate L1>L2>L1. And finally listen and Chorus/ Shadow audio until I have completely “memorized” the material and feel comfortable that my imitation of the native speaker is accurate.


Anyway, I am approaching Mandarin differently than Spanish which was a reading heavy plan for the first year with almost no listening. During the process, my goal of the language changed from reading it with very little want to speak it to using it daily which is where I am now.

My goal for Mandarin is to speak and UNDERSTAND the spoken word in order to converse.

Thanks in advance.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby leosmith » Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:59 pm

BOLIO wrote:Pinyin then radicals?

Imo, in learning Mandarin, the very fist thing a native English speaker with little/no background in similar target languages should do is learn pinyin/pronunciation. Why not do some listening first? Because if you don’t have a grasp on pronunciation, when you start listening, pictures/ideas will pop into your mind about what you’re listening to, they won’t involve pinyin, and this will certainly create some misconceptions about what you’re actually hearing. You might think you are hearing and repeating correctly, but you might not be. In other words, there is a threat of fossilized errors. Not nearly as bad as starting to read without learning pronunciation/listening, but not insignificant.

So my answer to your specific question is pinyin before radicals.

Learning radicals is a good idea to help you understand and remember characters, but I’m not sure there is value in separately drilling their pronunciations, as you seem to be planning. They sometimes indicate the pronunciation of a character, but not always. As you start to read, you will naturally develop the ability to identify their pronunciations imo, so you may want to reconsider this step if it looks time-consuming.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby BOLIO » Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:02 pm

leosmith wrote:Learning radicals is a good idea to help you understand and remember characters, but I’m not sure there is value in separately drilling their pronunciations, as you seem to be planning.



I appreciate you answering. As to drilling radical pronunciation, I am all ears. If it is not helpful or advisable then I will focus on the pinyin at let the other go.

Thanks again.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby leosmith » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:18 am

BOLIO wrote:If it is not helpful or advisable then I will focus on the pinyin at let the other go.

To be clear, I think it is useful to learn the radicals. It's just the explicit learning of the pronunciation of the radicals that I think may not be worth it.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby s_allard » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:25 pm

El Forastero wrote:I don't know if my experiment classifies as "Crazy", but I started to learn italian for 100 days, and I passed a C1 test. The initial goal was B2, but when I started to study the B2 preparation content, I realized that I understood C1 content, so I went for it.

The craziest language-learning-related experiment I have read about is the one by a guy who got a C2 test in italian only usind cards. His webpage is called: How I Passed the Demanding, 5-Part, 5 1/2 Hour, Oral, Paper and Pen, Highest Level (C2), Italian Language Exam Without Going to Italy – Here’s a Hint: the 326,538 Flashcard Reviews Helped a Lot.

You can visit it here: https://t.ly/Y1Ag


As I think someone else pointed out, there was nothing crazy about this fellow preparing for the Italian C2 exam. I read the blog post and came away admiring the very methodical approach he followed with extensive use of Anki flashcards. But he did a lot more than just flip through a huge deck of cards.

When I think about crazy methods or experiments, I always think of things that don’t work or are are guaranteed not to work. I remember from the HTLAL site the chap who had attempted to learn a language listening repeatedly to recordings in his sleep. Guaranteed not to work.

I think we have to accept that there is no magical method that can give instant long-lasting results.

Having said that, I do believe that one can certainly speed up the learning process. Living in the country where one can interact with the target language daily is a huge plus. Speaking a related language probably helps a lot. And there are learning strategies that, in my opinion, are better than others.

In an earlier thread that descended into a shouting match, I brought up the example, reported by Lýdia Machová, of a well-known polyglot who was able to learn enough conversational Slovak in a day to impress even native Slovak-speakers. I don’t know what crazy method this super-polyglot actually used but it worked.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby Le Baron » Fri Sep 17, 2021 3:54 pm

s_allard wrote:In an earlier thread that descended into a shouting match, I brought up the example, reported by Lýdia Machová, of a well-known polyglot who was able to learn enough conversational Slovak in a day to impress even native Slovak-speakers. I don’t know what crazy method this super-polyglot actually used but it worked.


Wasn't his method called: already basically knowing Slovak?

Okay, I jest.
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Re: Crazy language learning experiments

Postby einzelne » Fri Sep 17, 2021 4:11 pm

We have zero evidence of it but, apparently, "it worked"... O sancta simplicitas!
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