Grayson's Language Log

[grayson]

WEEK 51

Very little done on languages this week; only my nightly pleasure reading in the Spanish translation of the first Formic Wars book (and that not even every night). I'm busily preparing for everyone being here at Christmas, for my return to work after the new year, and for my plan to continue language learning in 2023 with much less time available.

This will be my last progress post for the year; I'll start back up on the first Monday of January, with my long-promised plan for 2023.

FRENCH – Assimil’s with Ease – [no progress].
GERMAN – Assimil’s zonder moeite – [no progress].
MANDARIN – Princeton’s First Step – [no progress].
SPANISH – Card’s La tierra desprevenida – pp 9–18.
DUTCH – Renkema’s Schrijfwijzer (6th ed.) – [no progress].
ENGLISH – Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) – [no progress].
- - - - - - - - - - -
Maudlin’s Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity – [no progress].
Baggott’s Quantum Cookbook – [no progress].

[grayson]

I hope everyone's new year is off to a lovely start!

I'm excited about what 2023 looks like for me. I'll be returning to full-time work in February, until I start school in September. I won't have much free time once that happens, so I've worked out a plan that I hope will keep FR-DE-ES-ZH in rotation for me going forward. The driver behind this plan is to turn them into a source of enjoyment as soon as possible. That's the only way I'll keep at them once my schedule gets busy again. To wit:

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My 2023 Plan
January – intense study of FR-DE-ZH to complete the Assimil (FR-DE) and First Step (ZH) courses, as well as associated workbooks (Progressives FR, Schritte DE, First Step ZH). The goal is to learn all the crucial grammar and develop enough vocabulary to profitably move on to graded readers. Nightly pleasure reading in ES before bed.

February through August – 30-45 mins each Sun-Thur evening to study FR-DE-ZH, ideally in the form of graded readers but with room for more lesson-like study as needed. Nightly pleasure reading in ES before bed.

September through December – I'll keep working part-time after school begins, which means evening study time will be taken by school. The language plan thus becomes to rotate my nightly pleasure reading through all four languages. I hope my FR and DE will then be advanced enough to read middlebrow novels, either by native authors or in translation. One appealing path is, for example, to read a widely translated science fiction series where I read the first book in FR, the second in DE, the third in ES, the fourth in FR again, etc. My ZH will certainly not be at that level by then, so every fourth book I read (chronologically speaking) will be a lower-level but hopefully still entertaining graded reader in ZH. And FR-DE may need to be graded readers at first, depending.

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You'll note there's only one skill being developed here: reading. I also plan to set up Spotify music lists for each language (enjoyment!) with e.g. Peter Fox and Rammstein for DE, Stromae for FR, etc. to help train my listening, and to watch Kurzgesagt and ScienceClic videos on YT when I have the time — but both of these are strictly in the "when I want to for fun" category. Speaking and writing will get attention in some future year (though of course I hope that reading & listening will shore up the foundation for those in the meantime).

I'll post my first progress report next week!

[grayson]

2023 WEEK 1

SPANISH – This past week I read each night before bed; now at 7% in La tierra desprevenida. (I'm switching from page numbers to percent read because it just makes more sense for ebooks.) It's getting easier as I progress; I'm looking up fewer words, both because I've acquired some of the vocab in the previous pages and because I'm understanding the story even when I don't know every single word. Also, the story is starting to get exciting and I've started to look forward to my nightly reading, instead of it feeling like a duty.

FRENCH & GERMAN – I've completed up through lesson 47 in Assimil with Ease / zonder moeite. On track to complete the courses by Jan 20. I'll move on to the Progressives / Schritte workbooks after that. I've researched novels to read after that, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how intelligible they already are! So my plan to arrive at the pleasure-reading stage asap is looking non-insane.

MANDARIN – Working through lesson 1 of Princeton's First Step course and workbook (which I finally got my hands on!). Looked at some of Mandarin Companion's graded readers Level 1 and was dismayed by how non-intelligible they are . So arriving at the pleasure-reading stage will take longer here, but that's okay. I'm actually really enjoying the workbook.

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Plans for next week: Get through lesson 74 in both Assimils. Spend 5 hours on First Step. Find out what the distant 50% FTL speck the mining ship in the Belt picked up is! (Well... I already know what it is, this being a prequel and all . But soon, in a book or two, Mazer Rackham in action!)

[grayson]

2023 WEEK 2

SPANISH –Completed 11% in La tierra desprevenida.

FRENCH & GERMAN – Completed through lesson 56 in Assimil German and lesson 54 in Assimil French. My goal to get through 74 in both was unrealistic. (I wrote a lot more about the meta-level of this in my productivity log, if you're interested.)

MANDARIN – Continued working through First Step workbook. Almost done with lesson 1, and I can tell the workbook is really helping. It's got 12 pages for each lesson, and a great mix of activities. Awesome!

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Plans for next week: To be honest, Assimil is boring the crap out of me. This is a hobby, so I don't have to do onerous things that bore me! For French and German, I'm going to switch to the Progressive (FR) and Schritte (DE) workbooks this week, and go ahead and start on some graded readers (instead of waiting until I'm able to read middlebrow novels). I'll keep plowing ahead on the current path for Spanish and Mandarin.

[DaveAgain]

To be honest, Assimil is boring the crap out of me. This is a hobby, so I don't have to do onerous things that bore me! For French and German, I'm going to switch to the Progressive (FR) and Schritte (DE) workbooks this week, and go ahead and start on some graded readers (instead of waiting until I'm able to read middlebrow novels).

Isn't German just misspelled Dutch? Couldn't you ditch courses for that and will understanding ?

[grayson]

Isn't German just misspelled Dutch? Couldn't you ditch courses for that and will understanding ?

There has in fact been a lot of that as I go through the Assimil — "oh, so this complex thing is just Dutch but with one small difference here." My Spanish is similarly helping with learning French (though not as much as Dutch is helping with German, since it's still a little rusty and I was never as fluent in Spanish as I am in Dutch).

So, in all seriousness, I do think the grammar workbooks + graded readers will get me where I need to go faster and with less irritation at contrived dialogues that don't even make up a story I could possibly muster some enthusiasm for.

[Elsa Maria]

I have tried Assimil for Dutch several times, and I can never get beyond about Lesson 15. I don’t like the silly conversations coupled with snippets of grammar.

Systematic grammar + graded readers sounds much more appealing!

P.S. Thanks for the link to your productivity log. Good reading there, too!

[Le Baron]

There has in fact been a lot of that as I go through the Assimil — "oh, so this complex thing is just Dutch but with one small difference here." My Spanish is similarly helping with learning French (though not as much as Dutch is helping with German, since it's still a little rusty and I was never as fluent in Spanish as I am in Dutch).

So, in all seriousness, I do think the grammar workbooks + graded readers will get me where I need to go faster and with less irritation at contrived dialogues that don't even make up a story I could possibly muster some enthusiasm for.

I borrowed a load of courses (on cassette or CD) from the library and I already had two old BBC German courses - Kontakte and Wegweiser, plus a German course produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk. Out of all these I extracted all the dialogues for listening. First on cassettes and later on CDs when I got my spiksplinternieuw CD burner on a Pentium 3! Those BBC courses are especially good because the dialogues are taken from daily life with real people in all walks of life. People speaking normally, like market traders, policemen, park keepers, school teachers, civil servants etc. I played these dialogues incessantly on a personal stereo ( ) and in the evening followed the actual lessons with commentary/grammar pointers for the dialogues.

I do the same now, but my computer is more powerful and I can process the audio at super fast speed and make mp3s. It's worth doing to get the listening you need.

[grayson]

It's worth doing to get the listening you need.

I agree, I'm going to have to do some listening worthy of the name to get to the point where I can understand what people say (one of my three goals for language learning, along with reading literature in its original language and serving as a useful bridge between people who don't speak a common language in, say, a shop or airport).

Right now I've got listening backburnered until fall, as a consistent exercise. (Of course, there's no rule that I can't listen to things earlier ). My vaguely plannish thoughts about that are (a) listen to audiobooks, especially of whatever book I'm currently reading in that language; (b) watch the sciency YT channels I've managed to find; (c) listen to music I like but now with a chance of hearing more than just mellifluous wroo wrah floos in the lyrics . Oh, and (d) movies.

I'm really bumping up against the fact that I chose to actively study these four languages when I thought maybe I was retired after all, seven or eight months into a sabbatical that was not producing much in the way of Giant Exciting Future Projects. Now that I'm returning to full-time work and then part-time work plus full-time school, I'm either going to have to give up some of them altogether, or get very efficient with my time (and bear-hug the idea that every little bit helps). Plus, full-time school will include things like Lithuanian, Gothic, Sanskrit, and Greek if I end up choosing the Comparative Indo-European track. One senses that "very efficient" may not be emphatic enough .

[grayson]

2023 WEEK 3

SPANISH – Read through 14% in La tierra desprevenida. It continues to get easier! I sometimes go a couple of entire paragraphs now where I understand every word and phrase without having to look up or guess from context. Spent 4–6m each day on Gramática de uso (A1–B2 workbook).

FRENCH – Started reading Les Malheurs de Sophie by the Comtesse de Ségur. Simple, but that's what makes it useful. Also inspiring is that she was 58 when she wrote her first novel. I'm only 55, so hey, not behind schedule. If I decide I want to write a novel after all. Spent 4–6m each day on Grammaire Progressive (A1 workbook).

GERMAN – Started reading Momo by Michael Ende. Also simple, perfect level. Spent 4–6m each day on Schritte Grammatik (A1–B1 workbook). Cases, man. Holy crap. Schritte has one measly lesson on them and doesn't explain it very well; my husband sent me a link to the list of prepositions he and every other Dutch high school student memorize as they learn obligatory German. Assimil had a lot of explanation, too, which I breezed through and will return to later, to study in more depth.

MANDARIN – Not at a level that makes reading possible yet. Spent 4–6m each day on First Step (workbook; no level listed, but I think A1–A2 at least). I love this workbook. I sing its praises. I bow to its awesomeness.