Coldrainwater's Log

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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:14 pm

Reading Update (Or on making progress, tome by tome)

Reading acts as a ready transport vehicle and certainly influences our perception of time. In my case, it is often a question of which century I happen to land in. Recently, I have been straddling 18th and 19th-century stages. Starts and stops mark memories with tougher and longer tasks leaving a stronger trace and more in their wake. More than a month has elapsed since I began reading cover to cover Vom Kriege - Carl von Clausewitz. Diving in, it felt like as logical a moment as any to tackle an ambitious 19th century manual on military strategy (Ein Warum nicht Moment). The German side of the text was likely the most challenging that I have read so far. Nonetheless, I felt in touch with the flow of writing and was very appreciative of how openly and clearly Clausewitz articulated his thoughts. The theatre of war is a heck of a theatre. I could see how modern military students might find this work as a bear though, especially if they were forced to tackle it in the normal compressed timeframe of an academic calendar. That I am not tested on the content is also helpful giving me the luxury to map and link my understanding how I see fit. The dual-language focus also had the usual benefits of facilitating awareness and allowing for reflection at important junctures. Intertwined with the many other lessons learned, Clausewitz was strongly influenced by Napolean and Friedrich der Große and the text stimulated quite a bit of interest in the related historical era in which they lived. What it lacked was equally tantalizing. So much focus on strategy really gives me the urge to find equivalent material on tactics to provide a sort of counterbalance.

I'll share a few quotes from the book that I particularly enjoyed:
/* Clausewitz - On War */
DE - Das bloße Motiv der Wahrheit ist in dem Menschen nur äußerst schwach, und darum immer ein großer Unterschied zwischen dem Erkennen und Wollen, zwischen dem Wissen und Können.
EN - Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability.

DE - Neid, Eifersucht, Besorgnis, auch wohl hin und wieder Edelmut sind die natürlichen Fürsprecher des Unglücklichen, sie werden ihm auf der einen Seite Freunde erwecken, auf der andern das Bündnis seiner Feinde schwächen und trennen.
EN - Envy, jealousy, anxiety, and sometimes perhaps even generosity are the natural advocates of the unsuccessful. They will win new friends for him as well as weaken and divide his enemies. Time, then, is less likely to bring favor to the victor than to the vanquished.

--No book is complete without a touch of humour
DE - August 1796 in der rauhen Alb gegen Moreau lieferte, bloß in der Absicht, sich den Rückzug zu erleichtern, wiewohl wir gern gestehen, daß wir das Räsonnement des berühmten Feldherrn und Autors hier nie ganz verstanden haben.
EN - On 11 August 1796 Archduke Charles fought Moreau in the Rauhe Alp for no other reason than to facilitate his own retreat. We must confess, however, that in this instance we have never entirely understood the reasoning of the famous general and writer.

Der Schimmelreiter

Last week, I also read Der Schimmelreiter von Theodor Storm. Marshland, the ineluctable force of nature, superstition, spectral white. This was a short and much more accessible novel that left a good impression on me after reading it. While On War needs the right audience and interest and thus it might not be the best book for 'general language learning', the reverse is true of The Rider on the White Horse. Despite its status as a 19th-century work, it is very approachable. I appreciated the writing style and was inclined to the backdrop and setting from the outset.

Database Updates

I updated the database records that I am housing informally to include both new books. Probably the most interesting comparison from limited analysis is that Clausewitz used on average notably longer sentences than Mann (a bit surprising, but I think this was a notable part of what made the book harder to wade through, sometimes feeling as relentless as the wars he was describing) but less than half the distinct words (not totally surprising given Mann's penchant for detail and vocab compared with the disdain that Clausewitz often expressed against pedantic detail). They are presented in the order I read them below and from my perspective, the native Schimmelreiter, though offering a very different character, looks about as approachable as Erikson's Malazan translated selection. At least the jump from one to another might not be too rough.

Image

As a side note, I have started using LF-Aligner for making my parallel texts and it has performed admirably as a console app on my local Windows 10 operating system.
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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:24 am

I am nearing the two-year mark in my German studies, which is exciting. Unfortunately, all that motivation and enthusiasm hasn't translated to punctual writing and my log has to bear the brunt of infrequent attention. Thoughts on the learning process that could be documented here and read by the devoted insomniac tend to slip through my fingers unless I lay them periodically to keyboard. Succinct writing will have to be a goal for some other year...

March was our fiscal year-end at work, so I was as busy programming as I was languaging. I found it easier to focus exclusively on reading and podcast listening. Via dogged effort combined with an overabundance of rest breaks (sometimes after each sentence), I just finished reading in parallel the first volume of Das Kapital von Karl Marx. The work consists of three volumes, the final two of which were published posthumously. Each is a tome in its own right, so in choosing it, I am staying true to my own folly. From an historical perspective on economics, there is wealth to be had from within.

The most challenging portion of volume one is the first part, which covers a great deal of theory that I suspect will discourage many readers. However, to his credit, Marx uses at least three to four distinct writing styles in the course of the volume, each bringing fresh insight. I felt he could wield style very much to suit his needs and probably could have conjured new styles almost at will. It might be the wrong moment to ask what makes one author an economist that changes the course of history and the next a Kafka, who would have burned his own works given the chance.

Moving onto the work itself, a notable part of the first volume is devoted to teaching the reader how to orient from a current state of affairs and back into economic development, ever probing, seeking and invariably making discoveries that extend far beyond the shallow surface of appearances. Here he very much practised in life what he preached in text. The book treats the labour of work with one hand and shows the labour of learning with the other.

Unfortunately for most, Marx repeats himself more or less ad infinitum. Normally this would be an annoyance, but I needed the linguistic repetition to roughly the same extent that Marx needed the redundancy, so we were a match. In that it addresses many aspects of the industrial revolution, it touches very close to home with respect to the structure of modern corporations. The many (honest as far as I could tell) historical insights were likely the most valuable to me. Bias and bickering were the least useful. To a fault even, the work is replete with data and direct references, so whether I wanted it or not (I did), I now have a look into many key economic figures of the time.

It is often the case with foreign language reading that I have a pleasant choice between dual drivers. On the one hand, I could find myself holding a fantasy novel or Krimi with a compelling story. With Marx, it did not really start that way, so I turn to the second driver, the language learning side, which did not let me down. Both of those drivers must fail me before I dnf a major work of literature. The extra linguistic challenges around reading foreign expand my potential reading horizons to an even greater extent than the already impressive cultural exposure would presuppose. Enough time passed (or perhaps I got through the boring theory) for an interest in economics and a decent rapport with the reading to emerge. I don't think I could make it through a day of work in the corporate world while reading this and not see the irony.

Past a certain point, the factbook gripped as strongly as any fiction which earned the former a firm place in my reading plans. I see a budding Wikipedia habit developing now almost of its own accord. Amongst the quotes that I've culled, I will have at least one pile of required articles to read for perspective and another for homework. Keeping in mind that this text was written with the working class in mind, I have to admire the language use of the day. As a rather logical and analytical type, I am not so easily swayed by emotional arguments, so I am as likely to read further works from personalities lauded as from those lambasted. The only ones I might miss are those that no one talks about.

Regardless of my own biased thoughts, I can't help but note that my virtual clipboard history very much runneth over with saved quotes and I now have quite the backlog to wade through. I was legitimately concerned that I might have the app see wrong and that I would lose data before finishing the book (I didn't but it was close). When sorting it all, a few notes will go to Anki, a few will be saved in a file specific to Marx and a few will likely be shared here, once I recover enough industry to put them all together. I have so little writing stamina that I have fatigued myself (again) in my own native language and therefore must conclude. Much respect to a certain author (directly named) that managed to write several thousands of pages of content to help me learn German. For the record, I read about 700 pages of Marx and recall Clausewitz being the more difficult of the two authors to read and follow.
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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Apr 11, 2021 8:02 am

It cooled off in Texas this evening and I finished a book on German grammar, both rare events. The text was Using German: A Guide to Contemporary Usage by Martin Durrell and I read it in dead-tree format. It was a bit awkward climbing stairs and reading about valency, but I managed. What particularly impressed me about this book is the focus and treatment of speech registers. Considering each grammar topic as a stratification of register worked well and Durell's thoroughness and professionalism were ever-present. For someone like myself who is interested in grammar for reading purposes (not solely but is a major factor and focus), this book is a good choice as his examples are of high overall quality, have a broad scope and delineate what is literary and what isn't. Of the two books from Durrell that I have now read, Hammer's Grammar is the critical one to own.

While it is fresh on my mind, a quick word on near-future time allocation. To the best of my judgement, what will benefit me most in the coming year (my third) is to read more, perhaps a lot more. LR (L2-L2) is an open door as is general extensive reading should I feel like switching techniques at any point away from parallel text and Anki. I believe I should be able to support my reading with a modicum of coursework strongly focused on improving grammar and through it gently encourage output, mainly in the form of thinking and speaking to myself (perfectly valid conversations to be having for an introvert). Podcast listening is going well, so I see no reason to change. Listening overall is unlikely to fall fully into place until at least my reading is stronger (a pattern based on my own study choices, how I approach listening and my own preference for reading).

As is typical for my language learning, the first area I feel reasonably comfortable with is vocabulary. Nevertheless, my knowledge of words is relatively passive and could use substantial clarification and added depth. I am still flat out wrong with my guesses often enough to notice. I would be surprised if it were otherwise. I will continue to work on vocabulary, mainly out of interest and because it typically is not very time consuming compared to the benefits I get from it.
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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:57 am

From our German Resources thread, I picked a promising multiple-choice exercise base, deutschakademie as a means to practice grammar. I plan to use it in a similar manner to kwiziq. Many of us are still impatiently waiting for Kwiziq to add additional languages. Right now I am using the Android App for deutschakademie and have worked through 200 problems. It has been helpful.

I am not sure the exact source, but it appears many questions are related to various Arbeitsbücher and Lehrbücher since I saw an option to pick questions by series/publisher. That makes for an interesting idea matching theory to praxis as well as an interesting coordination effort. Here are some Amazon links with reviews for sample books in most of the series that I saw mentioned:

Aspekte
Berliner Platz
Delfin
em neu - 2008
Lagune
Moment Mal
Optimal Deutsch
Pluspunkt
Schritte International
Themen Aktuell
Ziel B2
Tangram

Most of the above books are new to me, but some like Themen Aktuell, I recognize. I may have a chance to check out one or two of them in the course of my studies, but in the meantime, others may find them helpful.

Edit: Adding a few more book links as I find them from the same site:

Achtung, Deutsch A1
Akademie Deutsch A1+
Aussichten A1
DAF kompakt A1
DAF leicht A1
Ja genau B1
Linie 1 B1
Menschen A2
Motiv B1
Netwerk B1
Passwort Deutsch
Studio d B2
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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:09 pm

Parallel to deutschakademie practice problems, I read Schaum's Outline of German Grammar. Short but clear grammar explanations are aligned with an abundance of exercises. After an ambitious start, my strategy quickly petered to a careful reading of both explanation and exercises. The outline did what it claimed on the cover, and I would give it a solid 4/5 stars. There are also nearly three hours of audio available that can be downloaded from their website in mp3 format. I plan to use it as an audio grammar review, mainly picking up on grammar patterns while in a listen-only mode.

What happened yesterday was more interesting. From the list above, I realized I owned a hard copy of Themen Aktuell - A2. After briefly thumbing through it, I decided to read the 120 pages in one go. The experience was fairly immersive, especially so when read as a binge. The text was monolingual with style mirroring the approach in Assimil in several respects.

They did a good job of grading and included hard but approachable vocabulary for an A2 reader, so it could be taken safely as an intensive read. Grammar is illustrated less explicitly with mini-tables interspersed and a longer grammar section included in the appendix. Examples were cultural and relevant to everyday life as well as to the different stages in life overall. In sum, I was objectively impressed with the content given aim and audience even though much of it was a clear two decades stale. I had a better shot at actively analyzing the grammar on the tail end of having read Schaum's than I would have if I picked this up cold. I saved the final grammar appendix for review today. Toward the end of the binge, I felt I could get a glimpse at many of the different grammar parts at once in a given sentence if I concentrated carefully. The glimpse sadly didn't extend to seeing the right answers, but at least I was noticing what I should be looking for. Today, I am more or less back to normal, though I did manage to sleep quite late in the afternoon, so perhaps a point or two consolidated.

Some reading horsepower was needed for Themen and I am happy that I waited until at least my second year to read it. For the record, I wouldn't try to implicitly absorb grammar this way unless I had it as a component of a much larger grammar learning plan that included much more direct grammar instruction (reference grammars + exercise books + online problems and other as needed).
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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Thu Apr 22, 2021 3:33 am

Tomorrow I have my first COVID dose scheduled. Depending on my reaction, Friday may be a paid holiday for me. I have had a few firsthand reports of people crawling over to their respective laptops to log in, but so far no one has had anything serious lasting over 24 hours. I am not expecting anything so dramatic but time and needles will tell.

With a lighter work week, I have been able to do quite a bit of grammar reading. I have worked with five books and have completed passes through Themen Aktuell - B1, Schritte plus neu 1 A1.1 and A1.2. I need a few quick rounds pitted against A1 material to collect basics and Schritt 1 was very traditional in that regard. Themen Aktuell was a weekend job completed prior to my regression into A1 study mats.

Overall, I have done more reading than exercises and in doing so have surveyed several different presentation styles. I have decent momentum and prefer not to slow rhythm or flow with a change in style. To date, I have worked on about 870 problems, done app/Anki style from deutschakademie. So far I have stayed glued to print or e-text formats for reading and am treating the switch to online as an ace in the hole for the time being.

The booklist I am currently working with is perhaps too long for my incipient and modest reading and listening primary use cases, but I will try to get through what I can while there is still ample wind in the sails. For now, I am gradually building habit and exposure hours and just going with it. Occasionally, I lapse into pure reading mode but for the most part, I keep focus on grammar analysis and am driven mostly by didactics.

Delfin
The fourth book I have used this week is Delfin. I will be the first to say that I picked it for the cover. There is another seacoast themed series called Laguna with conspicuously similar markings. My first impression of Delfin wasn't super positive, but I did one of the fastest 180s in the short history of my language learning.

It is the Arbeitsbuch that I am smitten by and not the Lehrbuch. What appeals to me is multifactor. It is monolingual (a plus for my current state of play). Wordlists included are substantial. They do not provide any definitions whatsoever (which I don't need), but they do provide a handy notation showing plurals (which I could use). They follow that with some regional vocabulary highlights that are a nice touch.

The entirety of the Arbeitsbuch may not offer a single explanation. In place of explanations, they have well-designed charts that are easy on the eyes (just a good layout) and are often accompanied by minimal, but simple and effective examples (sparse but not spartan). There are tons of exercises that I have ear-marked to look at on a second pass. In all, it struck me as a very good personal fit based on some unusual characteristics (that many would call flaws). If ever I make Anki cards for long-term retention, so far these tables would be the ones I add. They seem like they would offer the least visual resistance between card and memory.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Apr 22, 2021 5:07 pm

coldrainwater wrote:Tomorrow I have my first COVID dose scheduled. Depending on my reaction, Friday may be a paid holiday for me. I have had a few firsthand reports of people crawling over to their respective laptops to log in, but so far no one has had anything serious lasting over 24 hours. I am not expecting anything so dramatic but time and needles will tell.
FWIW, I had my 2nd Pfizer shot March 30. The only aftereffect was a sore shoulder for a day or two. Good luck.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:04 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:FWIW, I had my 2nd Pfizer shot March 30. The only aftereffect was a sore shoulder for a day or two. Good luck.
Thanks for the feedback as I experienced the same. I had plenty of energy and felt great training the day of and the next two days after getting the vaccine (Pfizer dose 1). If I wasn't biased by the knowledge of having received an IM shot in one arm, I don't think I would have noted anything beyond imperceptible workout soreness. I like that they use v-safe to provide feedback and I check in daily to help them collect data.

Study Update
Since my last update, I read two grammar books cover to cover. The first was Collin's Easy Learning Grammar. Grammar explanations and examples take up the first two hundred pages and express similar density and example style to PMP material. The last 100 pages are pure verb conjugation tables, exactly as you would find online. I would give it a rating of good overall, 3/5 mainly due to the fact that there is an abundance of high-quality competition, which sets the bar very high. I have always enjoyed material by Collin's and there are always multiple points of benefit.

Second up was Deutsch Grammatik einfach erklärt. It is marketed and sold as a reference grammar made easy. I would give it a solid 4/5 and was really impressed with the quality of the material. There was ample attention to detail and the author Jan Richter did his research and followed through with his claims. Great colour coding accompanied a layout/presentation that made it very smooth to read. The actual English explanations really did clarify better than most books I have read. Even though I read it in a single day, it was weekend work and I have many positive takeaways that I have missed in other resources. He has a knack for explaining well, both in writing and verbally.

This second book is a follow-up on my part from having listened to the Easy-Deutsch youtube videos during my grammar pre-soak a while back. Quite a few texts are available for purchase here: shop.easy-deutsch.de, enough to make for a complete program I would say. Translations are available in multiple languages. I might pick up another if I end up with specific pain points. For now, I am sufficiently inundated with resources that seem to offer a great deal beyond what I currently know.

As a minor caveat to both books, clarity was achieved in part by simplifying examples, probably a necessary step to make it accessible to a beginner audience. There was very clear guidance, especially from Easy-Deutsch to assist with output and actually speaking the language. The vocabulary thus wasn't too advanced and certainly had a colloquial [though still didactic] feel.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:25 am

Notes on - German for Reading Knowledge by Richard Alan Korb

I have quite the positive feedback to give for this book and am going to steal a full post for it. Korb's text is smartly designed and comes replete with a form of built-in grading. From the outset, the structure is clear and you can pick your dose of poison depending on how deeply you want to dive. Chapters move from English grammar explanation with convenient parallel DE/EN samples to DE Übungssätze and finally to an end of chapter Lesestück, with the final two portions accompanied by vocabulary footnotes.

Reading strategies are intricately woven and inseparable from grammar instruction. Translation techniques and strategies are also encouraged and explicitly covered. By far the most useful chapters for me start with 23, Extended-Adjective Constructions. I will share a few main ideas from the text that help readers stay oriented well enough to make it through a German sentence. Getting lost can certainly happen for more reasons than a mere lapse of attention and this book does solve for those issues.

An illustrative example (nested extended-adjective construction):
Korb wrote:
Kürzlich fragte mich einer der (an das [schon seit Jahren baufäl-
lige] Balkongeländer gelehnten) Mieter, wann das Haus reno-
viert werden soll.

Recently one of the tenants leaning on the balcony railing,
which has been dilapidated now for years, asked me when the
building is to be renovated.

Once separated cleanly by parentheses and brackets, as shown above, deciphering nested constructions like this becomes much easier and allows the sentence to fall into place (fall into meaning really). For that to happen in real-time, being prepared for word order variation is important. Having a quick pep-talk with your short-term memory wouldn't be out of line in my book either, especially when the subordinating conjunctions start to pile up.

In aggregate, plenty of what I would term sentinel markers are shared to help readers orient around the standard case, gender and number logic. Many are different than what you get from a traditional speaking or writing-oriented grammar text. The author states the importance of reading the full sentence before starting translation and of what parts of it to seek so as not to get lost in the details. In sum, there are enough examples and strategies provided, that an interested reader should be able to pick up from where the writer left off. The book forms an integrated whole.

Grundwortschatz
Korb doesn't shy away from including plenty of vocabulary to practice with (reasonably dense in that regard I would say). The index in the back reads like a light mini dictionary: concise and bilingual with gender and plural formations included. The vocabulary range covered is impressive in my opinion and very well-chosen for reading purposes. I would probably want to be at least at an A2 or even B1 vocabulary level if looking to read this for pleasure. I believe the text has been used in some graduate-level courses in the past. Lots of students complained about the book being too expensive and a few even complained about there being too much vocabulary (mind you this is a text designed to help you learn to read harder German material).
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Mon May 03, 2021 3:58 am

I spent the week reading about reading, this time from German for Reading by Sandberg and Wendel. Their programmed approach is based on learning grammar patterns and related function vocabulary first while building context and introducing additional reading vocabulary through natural repetition. I found the work razor-sharp and crystal clear overall. There is a ton of reading inside and enough exposure to make it count for something in the overall scheme of study. I made a close study and careful reading of the first 400 pages and had a brief dalliance with the remainder. The last bit was on the subjunctive and you might fairly say that I couldn't the subjunctive.

One part technique, two parts finesse
Well-known passages (from Jung, Schweitzer, Goethe et al) are first split by sentence. They are then modified and used to illustrate chapter topics with programmed responses provided in English. The samples are of sufficient length and richness of content for a reader to connect all manner of dots. They often tell a cultural story. This provoked more interest than dry text and made the whole of the experience more memorable.

The programmed response method provides immediate, on-page feedback and verification. For someone like myself interested in self-study, this is a major boon and timesaver. It adds a sense of timelessness to the work as well in that I find many textbooks are now outmatched by modern online resources that provide such rich and ready feedback. Here it is etched right onto the page.

Other textbooks that have separate solutions manuals and/or cram answers in the back of the book are simply inconvenient and inefficient. In this latter case, it feels like the solutions themselves are more of an afterthought than a primetime contender. It is almost like the publisher, at the 11th hour, reminded the authors that solutions needed to be included but had to be made as far out of reach as possible and formatted as crudely as etiquette allows.

In this book, the element of finesse comes into play through sheer clarity and coverage of material. They do an excellent job of explaining by contrasting example and seem to catch an exhaustive number of corner cases and reading scenarios. Compared to Jannach's text which I read last week, this is much easier to follow for self-study purposes and offers more content. The entire book is like one big non-fiction spoiler and I would leave it on the shelf if you don't want a major sneak peek into German philosophical/cultural/political German literature. It is written by readers for readers and has enough variety to keep a learner interested.
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