Sae's Log (Vietnamese, Tuvan & Mongolian)

[Sae]

I had my last Vietnamese lesson of the year, which was an easy going one that ended on making a list of New Years goals in Vietnamese, which ended up being:

• Học tiếng Việt đến B2 hoặc C1
• Học tiếng Mông Cổ đến B1
• Đọc 5 quyển sách Tiếng Việt
• Ăn tốt hơn, ăn khỏe hơn, ăn ngon hơn
• Nấu thức ăn thường hơn
• Học Morin Khuur ít nhất một lần một tuần.
• Anh làm tội ác nhiều hơn

And in English:

• Learn Vietnamese to B2 or C1
• Learn Mongolian to B1
• Read 5 Vietnamese Books
• Eat better, eat healthier, eat tastier
• Cook food more frequently
• Learn on the Morin Khuur at least once a week
• I will do more crimes (Joking, of course)

I guess they're some achievable goals.

Also, I got my Tuvan Manual in the post yesterday, which looks to have some pretty useful stuff in there that I work from. And I maybe have enough stuff to create study material from. My aim will be after my Mongolian challenge is to start putting together said study material.

Now my plan for my 40 days with Mongolian.

• Listen to music in Mongolian ONLY. I have music covering traditional, rock, metal, rap and pop, which should give me variety.
• Anything I watch has to be Mongolian with exceptions of where people "hey check this video out". I have picked out a few Mongolian movies, a few Mongolian YouTube channels, am using a separate YouTube account to help influence the YouTube algorithm to recommend more Mongolian content. I've also picked a couple of series in the Mongolian language. All stuff I can watch without understanding the language.
• I will read at least 1 article a day from News.mn every day. Even if I don't understand it.
• At least 1 hour Mongolian study a day
• Daily progress updates (and maybe catch what I can improve on as I do)
• Book at least 2 Mongolian iTalki sessions, one for practice. And a 3rd for testing progress
• Start with the grammar and a set selection of common verbs, nouns, pronouns and time expressions to practice key areas.
• Work through exercises in the "Colloquial Mongolian" book I have and use the practice conversations
• Set writing exercises on specific topics that allow me to make use of repetition. And try to use words I know to explain something BEFORE I look up any up or ways of saying things I've not learned, so I can be flexible with the language.
• Keep any lists of vocab I've learned near me. Only resort to using them if I cannot legit remember something.
• Record myself speaking, cringe a lot on hearing myself back. Seek feedback from Mongolian speakers I know I can get feedback from.
• Find a Chinese restaurant, bring a Go Pro, do reaction videos of "British guy surprises local Chinese with flawless Mongolian".
• Make a video on how to learn Mongolian in 40 days and get some internet clout and omit the fact I've studied some Mongolian beforehand. Then get called out by some real Linguists and then do a YouTube apology video where I blame everybody except myself.

The goal of reading news, watch TV & films and listening to music I don't understand is to keep a consistent feel and rhythm for the language and try to start to recognise patterns from the bits I learn and start to understand and have the "oh, hey, I realised what that means" moments until I get to a level where it starts to be comprehensible input. And this would also be Mongolian exposure outside of my study hours.

[Sae]

Mongolian 40 Day Challenge: Day 1

Today I've:

• Reviewed the grammar principles I know, which are: how to ask questions, past tense, present tense, future tense and present continuous tense. etc.
• Reviewed & practiced question words in sentences to memorize them as I had forgotten a few.
• Written up a vocab list of question words and a list of verbs I've practiced with (but not fully leaned) to write sentences with.
• Watched episodes of Artger on YouTube
• Watched an episode of Тэгри чину (Wolf of the Tegri) on voo.mn

To follow:

• Building a list of common nouns
• Building a list of time expressions
• Writing sentences using these built lists & creating conversations using them and to practice

And here is a trailer of that "Тэгри чину/Wolf of the Tegri" I started watching:

[Sae]

Mongolian 40 Day Challenge: Day 2

I decided to focus more on question words again. I was starting to put together a noun list and decided it's better I just build it as I go and just look up the ones I need and refer back to ones used when I practice.

I also put together a conversation that covers all my question words and the different ways (that I know of so far) of asking a question. Google Translate is translating it into English in the way I intended. But it's a nonsensical conversation of course.



One note on the translation: Because pronouns in Mongolian are genderless, Google Translate defaulted to "he" until it got a woman's name for context.

So this is a conversation I will practice to help drill in the question words I need to practice. I prefer used sentences in context to memorising words on their own or flash cards. This way I retain it better.

But I am covering:

• Questions with a question word. Which end in uu/üü
• Questions without a question word. Which end in be/ve
• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• Why?
• How?
• When?

For other activities, it has been a music day. Though I will have more Wolf of the Tegri lined up to watch this evening.

My goal is to at least have my main sentence structures down to a level I don't need a reference by the end of this first week. My main tenses are already there. But I want to also focus on:
- Questions
- Comparative sentences
- Conjunctions
- Noun cases
- Adjectives (learning how to use them)

[Sae]

Mongolian 40 Day Challenge: Day 3

Sadly, I didn't get as much time in today as I would have liked as today way busy. But I made sure to get some input and practice my questions from yesterday. I've also signed up to a Glossika trial, although I do not normally do apps, I figured it's the kind of thing I can just whip out when I don't have my other materials with me, which I ended up using today for that reason. If I am rehearsed enough with my grammar goals by the end of the week, then I am on schedule for the expectations I have in my head.

[edit]
For my input, I've gone for some Artger. And this is a fun cooking video and get a good mix of Mongolian, English and Korean.



Maybe I will try making Tsuivan again, I've tried to before, but my noodles sucked. I also have some dumpling wraps to use up, so I might make some buuz on the side.

[Sae]

Mongolian 40 Day Challenges: Days 4, 5 and 6

I encountered my first hurdle, days when I am busy or tired, hence I did not post any updates on the last three days...heck I even fell asleep on Thursday. But it does not mean I've not stuck to my Mongolian studies, I've just not posted about them.

Noun cases became my next focus, this is supposed to be one of the harder parts about Mongolian grammar. But I think I am still on track for learning the grammar I want to by the end of week one, because I only need to learn how comparative sentences work, how adjectives work and learn a few conjunctions. I don't need to learn them to a level I can recite it all off by heart, but some I can understand all the different pieces and how to use them and use them for reference, so I memorise things through use and know what to look out for when reading and listening.

But what I've covered grammatically (overall):

- Basic syntax (Using STOP, or, Subject Time-expression Object Predicate (verb))
- Simple Present Tense
- Simple Past Tense
- Present continuous tense
- Future Tense
- All negative forms of the above tenses
- The different ways of saying yes/no
- Pronouns
- Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, ablative, instrumental and comitative cases
- Asking questions

I realise there's more to grammar than I'm covering, but this gives me plenty to get started with and to use the language and I can learn more along the way.

Over the last 3 days I also caught up on some rules for pronunciation, because there is a logic for where the stresses are in a word are and what sounds are voiced or not voiced and when to treat a letter as silent. I only knew about the "if it's a vowel is at the end of a word, don't pronounce it and pronounce bayarlalaa as bayarllaa" and just been trying to match audio, so this gives me more to work with, especially with written exercises.

And funnily enough, taking this approach is making me feel better about how I'm going to need to tackle Tuvan, because with the resources I've got, I'm going to need to tackle it in a similar way.

And talking of resources, I have found I've ended up using Nomin Ger the most so far, because it is really good at explaining grammar principles and the person who makes videos is very clear and she is pretty engaging. They also have some good videos for input on their YouTube channel and they cover cultural things too.

For example, here is a video of her just going around asking different people what their favourite things are:



And one thing I noticed from their videos is that they seem to pronoun "вэ" ("ve") as "weh".

After nearly a week with 33 days left to go, do I think I'm going to achieve my goal? Of course not. But I think I could make good progress, certainly more than I would have done, The positive take is that I've stuck to is every day this week, to which I'm sure some language learners might say "isn't that what you're supposed to?", they give me too much credit. My Vietnamese has only ever been studied 2 or 3 times a week. And my input has been higher.

In terms of other goals. I managed to get 1 session with my Morin Khuur in and I may shoot for 2 as the day is young, but I need to get some new rosin. And I still need to meet my exercise goal for the Language Fitness challenge, well, I still got all day to meet that goal.

[Sae]

This morning was a Vietnamese sessions, the first half was just practicing conversation and then we moved onto goals for 2023 and getting me to the level I've set myself in my new year's resolution and how we'll focus, as well as moving onto material aim at developing a B-Level in Vietnamese with some focus on written exercises and building my spoken fluency.

And my tutor had me write a paragraph talking about my own goals in Vietnamese:

Anh sẽ đọc sách tiếng Việt và viết truyện, anh sẽ nói chuyện rõ ràng. Anh sẽ hiểu người nói nhanh. Anh sẽ xem phim tiếng Việt và hiểu nó. Anh sẽ gặp em ở Việt Nam và chúng ta có thời gian vui và Tiếng Việt của anh sẽ không tệ. Anh sẽ không ngủ quá nhiều. Anh sẽ hạnh phúc và khỏe hơn nhưng anh sẽ vẫn ăn mì gói.

Which translate as:
"I will read Vietnamese books and write stories, I will tell stories clearly. I will understand fast speakers. I will watch Vietnamese movies and understand it. I will see you (my tutor) in Vietnam and we will have a good time and my Vietnamese won't be bad. I will not sleep too much. I will be happy and healthy but I will still eat instant noodles.

I often make the joke I'm going to sleep in his lessons and almost always make a reference to sleep. And he's made the point about eating healthy and often when he asks in Vietnamese what I've had for breakfast and it's usually "instant noodles". I also start lessons speaking a different language, which is usually German, Spanish or French. Basically I am annoying, but he once got his payback by trying to get me to teach him Spanish through Vietnamese, I cannot actually speak Spanish...but today I chose French, so I've not learned my lesson.

Mongolian 40 Days Challenge: Days 7 & 8

I think I've got enough of a basic knowledge of the grammar I want down. I think this will be useful when it comes to reading Mongolian, so my next week will be reading and copying Mongolian from written sources and also complete language exercises. From the reading the goal will be to first figure out the tense, the subject, the object and the cases and the parts of the sentence that connect each other. I use a colour coded system, which I will use for transcribing. Then I will get translations of words I don't know and add them to my vocab list to practice.

From what I looked at, it looks like adjectives work mostly in the same way as English. EG.
"You are a good friend" would be "you are good friend". There's also "Энэ бол цэнхэр муур" -> "this is a blue cat".

Comparative sentences, use the ablative case, and an example is:
"Мотоцикль бол машинаас хурдан юм"
"Motorbike is car-from quickly is"
"A motorbike is faster than a car" (I am biased)
And the same here:
"Үхрийн мах тахианы махнаас илүү өөх тос байдаг"
"cow meat chicken meat-from more fat there is"
"Beef is fattier than chicken".

So I think the main take aways are the ablative form, which is "-аас" (or something else depending on vowel harmony) and to use adverbs or something like "more" and of course to use the form of "to be/are/is" appropriate for the sentence structure, which I will pick up as I continue.

I have also booked a week off work, which is partly because I need one and I will use this to get some extra study time in.

For videos, today, I figure I'm gonna shake it up go for something funky. Today's input has been pop music, so it's relevant, but I'll put on some Mongolian TV whilst I'm doing stuff this evening.

[Sae]

Mongolian 40 Day Challenge: Days Uuuuuuh to Uuuuum

Okay, it's apparent that I am terrible at keeping on top of logs. Note to self for future: don't promise a daily log.

But how is it going?

I am still keeping on top of it daily, almost, I did give myself 2 days off, but made up time elsewhere.
So since learning the grammar I wanted to learn, I've done some writing exercises, which included a couple of writing prompts and a conversation I've created, but also translating a conversation from Mongolian to English I've not written. And I've completed some practical exercises. And tried to keep it input heavy this week, so trying to read Mongolian and also listen to it and watch content.

A couple of examples:

Би энэ жил сурна юы вэ?
Би Монгол хел сурах яагаад гэвэл би ирех жил Монгол явна.
Би Монгол хоол чанана ба би Бьетнам хоол чанана.
Би Тува хел сурна харин би ирех йил Тува явахгй харин би хөөмэи сурч байна ба би Тува хел дуу сурч байна.
Би морин хуураа тоглож сурна.

Уянга: Заяа ээ! Сайн байна уу?
Заяа: Сайн, сайн. Сайн уу?
Уянга: Сайн! Би та харах дуртай!
Заяа: Би ч бас.
Уянга: энэ юу ве?
Заяа: Энэ бол миний ном.
Уянга: Чи энэ ном дуртай уу?
Заяа: Тийм. Чинь дуртай ном ямар ве?
Уянга: Би дуртай ном байхгүй.
Заяа: Би ч бас.
Уянга: Би явна.
Заяа: Баяртай!
Уянга: Баяртай!

I don't have a wide vocabulary yet, which makes making my own examples a slow process, but I am making the point to use a dictionary to look up words I don't know. And I test what I've written against Google translate. There are undoubtably errors in what I've done so far and better ways of saying things.

But I think my next focus will be to build on some of my vocab and I've been building an Anki list to do it. Normally I don't do flash cards or Anki, but I can see it's advantage here and am willing to do it with the aim to that use what I try to memorise.

I've also been watching more of the Wolf of Tegri. I've struggled to find stuff I want with English subtitles and am just gonna have to live with it for now. However, I have started picking words out from what I'm hearing in Wolf of Tegri. Simple stuff but today I picked out: I, you, your, you (plural), me, my, people, person, this, but, and, me too and was able to recognise tenses a few times and any negative sentences.

[Sae]

And I've still been terrible at keeping this up-to-date.

But a status update on the challenge. I am still getting in Mongolian practice and input mostly daily. I saw a comment somewhere about Duolingo that had me kind of rethink my opinion about apps and how I use them. That is not to think of them as primary learning tools or for them to compete with your language learning space, but to compete with the space where you're sat looking at your phone, like instead of scrawling through Facebook or playing a little game it's time you can spend with a target language. So I've re-downloaded Duolingo to continue my Vietnamese path and Ling to do my Mongolian path because it may be complementary to my learning, even if I don't retain everything, it's more exposure and more "oh shoot, now I remember" moments. And I get too, this is where Anki is also useful here, which I could use for Tuvan once I build up vocab lists.

As for progress with the challenge. I've definitely failed and I've found it harder when I've been busier, especially without having the mental energy to absorb new information. Whilst the challenge that I facetiously set up to guarantee failure will unsurpisingly fail, I got 10 days left and I think it was still a good challenge, because it got me thinking a lot more about how I am approaching my Mongolian and forming a good habit with it whilst not neglecting my Vietnamese. And I've rethought some of my methods. I think now when I read Mongolian and sometimes hear it, there are key things I can spot that will help me understand the language as I progress (even if I am still a ways from understanding said material). And actually, there are a couple of features in the language I appreciate that help in this regard. And I think this has been an advantage of learning some of the grammar earlier. And I think my ear is getting better at picking out Mongolian, but it is remembering the pronounciation rule to a degree. because Mongolian doesn't sound like how it reads.

And on the Tuvan front, I've been putting something thought and pre-liminary plans together of how I might create study material for it. I am thinking a mix of grammar exercises to help memorise the principles and maybe creating some Anki decks for building up vocab. And building up some test conversations and input material. Maybe some exercises fueled by the online Tuvan dictionary.

For a long-term goal, maybe it would be neat to create something in a course format, but with a disclaimer unless I can get somebody who knows Tuvan well enough or speaks it natively to spot errors/mistakes, which is not so far fetched. Effectively, I just want to create what I wish I had and hope others may find it useful.

[Sae]

The 10th was the deadline for that challenge, so let's review myself.

Did I achieve my unrealistic goals?

Of course not. But that's fine. The idea of the challenge was to push myself into a focus with Mongolian self-study and maintain more self-discipline than I have. And I succeeded in failing a new year's resolution, like I set out to do.

Did I achieve realistic goals I might have expected to achieve?

Yes and no. I didn't end up following through with speaking to an iTalki tutor (though I will) and I sucked at keeping a daily log. But I still got in regular practice and found it a useful learning experience.

Hurdles/Problems/Lessons

I think the biggest hurdle has been time management and is one reason I was less inclined to sustain daily updates (it's time I could be doing something else). And I think I have grown an appreciation for language apps I normally consider 'bad' or avoided because I don't think it suits my way of learning. My perspective changed in that I don't think of them as learning tools, but ways to reinforce what I'm learning. I struggle to sit and memorise word lists and stuff like Duolingo can sometimes go in one ear and out of the other.

But how long does it take to do 1 lesson in Duolingo or Ling? Maybe around 5 minutes? It's on my phone and there's time that I maybe aimlessly browsing on my phone. So these actually apps feel like good use of time to expose myself and still learn new things that I can bring with me when I am doing more focused sessions.

I have also built a habit of when I do have more time to myself, like at the weekend, to allow myself more focused study, like to tackle new concepts or things that require more thought or effort. Because there comes my second hurdle. Weekdays. I'm a grown adult with a fulltime job and commitments. I am a software & web developer, so in effect I am using my brain all day, using the problem-solving aspects of my brain all day and dealing with second languages all day, just not human languages. So by the time I get home, I think my brain is much more inclined to want to relax and not focus on learning 3 languages. With Vietnamese up until this point, I mostly studied at the weekend and trying to transition into daily practice here of course ended up as a hurdle.

And I think by pushing as much focus into my Mongolian affected my Vietnamese, so I did pull it back a bit to give some focus back to Vietnamese because one thing I didn't want to do was neglect it.

So is it smart that I have 3 target languages at once?

Probably not. It's probably a factor in my slower progress. But it's not going to stop me.

And I think I know how I want to spend my time better. Weekdays, these are days I know my brain won't want to work too much, those days are perhaps best for input and taking advantage of language apps, particularly in down time. It can also be watching Phuc Map on YouTube, watching stuff on Voo.mn or reading articles.
For apps, I have Duolingo for Vietnamese, Ling for Mongolian and Transparent for Tuvan. And Anki for any custom decks I want to make, so I have something to keep me covered on these days to compensate.

I can set focus time for the weekends. So it's time with a tutor for Vietnamese. And self-study time for Mongolian and Tuvan. However, for Mongolian I will book still some tutor sessions, I am just budgeting at the moment having had some spend outs.

General Progress

Vietnamese practice is going well still, more stuff is clicking naturally and I am creating more complicated sentences correctly in conversation. I know I still have weaknesses in writing Vietnamese and will need to practice speech with people who aren't my tutor. We've also transitioned onto new modules for learning new stuff.

With Mongolian I am still focusing on improving my vocabulary and input. And I am focusing more on writing to begin with, because it's something I neglected with Vietnamese at the start and feel like I am suffering for it later down the line.

I have started up Tuvan again, this weekend just gone was where I put some focus time and am now working on creating my own study material and with that I am getting my head around the grammar and I'll be damned there's a case system. There's some some grammar I remember from when I did the Mango introductory course, but I may go over it as a refresher. But going over some grammar yesterday at least made me understand the pieces the make up the title of the song I'm learning: Dag = mountain, -lar = plural, -im = possessive, hence "Daglarim", my mountains.

[Sae]

Vietnamese is still going well, my tutor has increased his speed more and we're now enforcing the concept of: don't try to listen for everything, pick out what's important and get the meaning/idea but don't try to translate it. And this should help my listening comphrehension.

And I am sticking with Duolingo, I am now in the Amethyst league. And it is actually helping. There are news words I pick up and it's reinforcing old ones I've not used as much.

With Mongolian, there was a little less focus over the last week, but I am still using Ling to build my vocabulary, but I am also rethinking some of my approach thanks to how I've been planning out my Tuvan.

And with Tuvan, I've created an overview of my "learning plan" with goals, which could be adapted for other languages too. And I hope it is a solid plan.

Step 1) Language Introduction

Learn and understand the Tuvan cyrillic alphabet.
Try to learn & practice pronunciation
Learn & practice basic greetings and introducing yourself.
Practice writing, reading, speaking and listening to these phrases.

Useful resources: Mango Languages' free Tuvan intro course. It's only 1 chapter, but it covers the material needed here. "Let's Learn Tuvan" also has useful stuff here.

Step 2) Grammar Basics

Learn the basic grammar needed, but not to a lot of depth, but it should cover:
- Word Order
- Verb Conjugation
- All 7 cases
- Vowel Harmony
- Asking Questions

And in learning them, use practice sentences based off of a smaller vocab just to focus on understanding (not memorising) the grammar.

Useful resource for this: "Tuvan Manual" and "Let's Learn Tuvan"

Step 3) Vocabulary Building

Pick a list of 400 of the most commonly used words for any language and translate them into Tuvan.
Try to memorise these 400 words.
Write practice sentences using these words to help memorise them.

Useful resources:
Tuvan Dictionary: http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/tuvan/
400 Most Common Words: https://fastlanguagemastery.com/400-most-common-words/

Note: Some of the words in this list are covered by Tuvan's cases, so they may not have a direct translation and thus can be excluded.

Step 4) Applying what you've learned

Create sentences and paragraphs to practice what you've learned.
Pick topics to write and speak about.
Make practice conversations focusing on what you've learned so far.

Useful Resources: your grammar notes and your vocabulary list. Use a dictionary if you want to use a word you don't have, but the main focus is to reinforce what you've learned.

Step 5) Expanding through Speaking, Listening, Reading, Writing

Build on your 400 word foundation. You will roughly be at an A1 level.

Use prompts for your speaking and writing, try to cover different topics and increase your vocabulary, but use the principle of: try to express what you're trying to say with the vocabulary your already know (and convey the same meaning) before resorting to looking up words, this will help with being flexible. And some words don't have a direction translation from English and other words that convey the same meaning could be used instead.

Watch YouTube videos in Tuvan, such as: Sayana Mongush, Peppa Pig (only 1 episode), ArzhaanaS, Tuvan Cultural Center etc.
Listen to Tuvan Music: Yat Kha, Huun Huur Tu, Khooemi Beat, Oduchu, Alash, Chilgirgin, Kongar-ol Ondar etc.
Read News Articles: "Shyn.ru" is in Tuvan, not all Tuvan sites are in Tuvan (some are in Russian).
Read "Jungar Tuvan Texts" and other texts you can find.
When/if you can, speak to a Tuvan speaker

When using the above resources, make note of words & grammar you don't know and try to learn and understand them. Add new words to any word lists you're working from, so you can practice them. This is where you can build on your vocabulary too.

If a grammar structure isn't covered by a resource you have, you can spent time trying to figure out what the words are doing and try to spot patterns, especially if you see the structure repeated, you may be able to find common ground. But if you can understand the meaning, it's not worth a lot of effort with because you already understood it.

For milestones:
Aim for A2 with 600 to 1,200 words
Aim for B1 with 1,200 to 2,500 words
Aim for B2 with 2,500 to 10,000 words
Note: the Tuvan dictionary has 8309 entries.
The numbers are just estimates based on what some claim to be the number of words you might typically know for each language level. And thus should not be taken for granted, however, they provide some milestones for progress and gives targets to set.

---

However, to (hopefully) make the above plan useful for other people, I will start working on typing up Tuvan grammar rules, which I will do when I am studying them. And I will try to make a public Anki list or alternative of the ~400 words I settle on. And once I have a final plan (and something I've put to practice, so I can tweak it if need be) I guess I can find somewhere to put it for anybody looking to learn Tuvan. I think in the long run, I might be tempted to try making a course, but that's getting waaaaay ahead of myself and I know I'd need more than just the resources I have kicking around to do that.