Language Log - Koneho/Tolithe (Bahasa Indonesia dan/at Wikang Tagalog)

[Koneho]

Hi all! This will be my language log. I can't self assess but I have A2/B1 Tagalog as per my applied linguist friend at UST here in Philippines. I speak fluent taglish for better or worse. Very rarely do I find myself needing to use literary tagalog. My goal will be communicate in college level discussion with my compatriots at the Tagalog discord server.

I'm dabbling with Indonesian. It is like Tagalog, only if it were spoken by Chinese people. I'm trying to figure out where to go with my other L2s. I speak very OK Spanish, enough to live and work in Mexico back in 2016. I don't actively use or practice it

Right now I need to maintain my Tagalog. I'm considering doing the 1 dollar a month filipinopod thing. I'm also checking into reading native materials. I have a book from wattpad. If I can incorporate it into Leo's LWT clone I may try to do so. Although my motivation is slim. I find I don't enjoy most tagalog media (or most media) and non-fiction is overwhelmingly English here.

To sum it up:

Goals - Literary tagalog fluency
Choose between Japanese, Indonesian, or Mandarin as another language to tackle.

Many of my clients are Chinese/Taiwanese so Mandarin could go a long way; however I don't care for the language (or the culture).
Indonesian is just fun. It's like crack. The simple grammar, SVO word order, loads of cognates with English/Dutch and Tagalog. I quite enjoy the language just because I enjoy the language, not even speaking towards culture or people. Japanese would just be to fuffill 16 year old me's wetdream of being fluent. Spanish I don't plan on doing much with, I do use Chavacano often with some of my friends here and tagalog also has huge loans so the vocab is always fresh.

[Koneho]

So. I'm thinking of starting a Challenge with Chinese but in the mean time (10 PM UCT+8) I'm waiting on my last two hours of work to finish and doing duo lingo Indonesian. I wrote a passage on LT but no bites yet flexing my wanna-be tagalog.

Will probably do memrise and book reading after. Will edit as time goes on.

Edit 1
So. I've finished work for the evening. I've loaded the first part of Moymoy Lulumboy into LT. We'll see if I like LT or not since I got to this level mostly with Anki and Glossika. I'm not in the mood or at the point in my life to do not fun things. Despite what people think being an English Teacher in Asia isn't fun or exciting. It is time consuming and draining. I hope these fun ways of studying (duo lingo, memrise, and LT) can keep up steam when otherwise I'd lose interest. I know this forum has a lot of one three three seven book learners and that's cool.

I played with cloze master. I did a level in Indonesian. Indo has audio, tagalog doesn't. I'm noticing that sometimes the blanked word is a silly word to have in a cloze (is that what they're called), like a helping word or a linking word. Such as <ay> or <ng>, these words don't really stand apart by themselves and are kinda goofy to cloze out (or cloze in?).

Edit 2
So far I'm noticing right of the bat# live tweeting. That LT parses things weird af. It treats a word + linker as a whole new word. Mundong ito vs mundo. Also a few of the literary (written not spoken) discourse particles have no good translations in the popup dictionary they're using. I'll soldier on though as I imagine this is a problem with tagalog no matter where you go.

[Koneho]

20/06/2019 UPDATE

I'm laying off the tagalog for now. I think my best bet is to finish and revisit the glossika sentences which are on my old harddrive. I can't find an enjoyable way to progress pass my B1 level and I really don't need to. My visa is up in a year here and I'm not sure anything other than stubborness has kept me going this long. Readlang may be a better option for reading tagalog as it does phrasal translations rather than word - per - word but I think LT is still good for what it is. It also has a mini essay section like the old Lang-8 (I'm only 25 but my age is showing, I was a wanna-glot for many years and an avid reader of the old HTLAL forum).

I'd update on my plans but I'm on my break for a few hours (split shifts yayyy) before hitting the grind stone later. I'll do some sentences. I've downloaded Gradint and it seems to be nice other than the voices being awful. I'm talking to my programmer/geek friends about finding free voice packs that are better. They appear to have two mandarin (normal and pitch reduced) and one cantonese packs for download but I'm not interested (yet). The TTS for indo was awful and not useable. Until then I'll stick to my sentences and I'm dropping memrise and duolingo. I may still include clozemaster. Memrise is slow for what it is and anki is a better SRS. I have a program set up to rip memrise into SRS files anyways but for now I'll make my own decks with the sentences at hand.

If any other learners want to chime in about the reach from B1-> fluency its really hard. And frustrating with tagalog, not a lot of good media. I combed the gutenberg project but all the books are old (and in old ortho, which isn't an issue for a conversational Spanish speaker but it defeats the purpose of these assisted reader programs like LT and Readlang and Lingq). Also the transcribers are fools who decided to transcribe the old ng with tilde as n~g or ~ng or something rediculous. The digraph is the same ng just with out the tilde over it. I don't know why they felt the need to further impede this, (yes! they left a NOTE saying it was on purpose). Nakaka baliw ang taong to grabe. I did look in to graded readers and found a few on Lazada for ~500 PHP (10 bucks). That is also out of budget as I transition into my new school and new pay period. Things will get better though!

Cahimat sa gayo-y di anyong causap
Benvolio'y naguica sa pinsan niang uagas,
aniya, ¿"baquit caya cung gayo,y sa han~gad
ayao pahinuhod sa aquing hicayat
Kahimat sa gayo=y di anyong kausap Benvolio'y nagwika sa pinasamiang wagas aniya, "

"bakit kaya kung gayo-y sa han-gad ayaw pahinuhod sa aking hikayat" - Faithful modernization including historical glottals now lost in metro manila dialect.

Something like the trash transcription above in the old orthography (and this is pre war ortho, way old!, why?) would just furhter confuse the pitiful pop up dictionaries we wanna be tagalistas have to suffer through.

[Koneho]

I did about 40 minutes of TL-TL audio with the LR method. Book 50 has loads of sentences, they're not glossika tier but they're OK.

I did indonesian sentences.

~~~~~
21/06/2019

Today, I've yet to do my sentences but I've been doing Clozemaster for Tagalog and Indo. Clozemaster is exactly what I need for tagalog. I'm filling in blanks in vocab that otherwise I wouldn't use. Words that are deep or literary, its fantastic, and its fun. Retention rate is yet to be seen but I use curated tatoeba sentenences in my own studies; so I'm bound to see the same sentences over and over and over again regardless. I mentioned this BBS to one of my co-workers who is N1 in Japanese and trying to push it further. I hope to see him make a log soon. Great to network with like minded people. Rather than be told languages other than Spanish or Chinese are time-wastes.

[Koneho]

22/06/2019

I did several hundred sentences in Clozemaster for Indo and Tagalog yesterday. I'm listening to ID->ID audio whilst working. Still can't get my old sentences backup. If anyone would like to see a rather English example (it is on a spectrum), this is how Filipinos often communicate with me.

"Loko I can't get a loan na malaki they will not give higher money pa first load is 1k 2nd 5k and 3rd pwedi 8k but u have to wait pa ng ilang days bago mag naka kuha ng mas malaki pa na pera for example i will get 1k sa first loan ko it will take ilang days pa bago ma approve and i will get my 2nd loan ang tagal kaya naiinis ako when i knew na ganyan pala ang process ng loan"

- Discussing how loans work in the PH, quote from Filipino native. So to those of you who think I'm just joking with the literary tagalog being a pain, bear in mind that this is how communication often is here. My Clozemaster is giving me words that would otherwise be English 9/10. I also did some listening (just turned on the TV) while doing things downstairs this morning.

Can't wait to put my sentences into anki and get the ball rolling. Just super busy now that kids are out of school and my tutoring gig has gone up in hours.

I also will start a secret challenge and record and reveal it in 1 to 3 months. !

Edit 1: 5 11 PM UCT +8

First day of reviews for tagalog cloze master. 100% accuracy on 58 sentences. Learning lots of vocab as my grammar is pretty in place, also I'm being exposed to right derived constructions (pagagawa etc instead of the left derived constructions I usually use).

Will update later on Indo and secret project.

Edit 2: Rough day. Doing review of my first 100 audio sentences on Indo. Just downloaded a program to rip them and make an anki deck out of. Did a few hundred tagalog Clozes but my A0 Indo is getting frustrating on Clozemaster. Not gonna give it up, but I need to maybe finish the Pimsleurize course and get a bit further ahead in my Indo before I consider going full stream at Clozemaster Indo. Really disheartening.

Edit 3: My friend is slowly translating the LONWEB parallel texts. I'm giving him the same ones already available in Indonesian. So I'll have a tri-lingual corpus by the end of it. He's annotating it and offering some interesting commentary in his translations. I've approached him about making the translations official to help other tagalistas get some ez graded reader type content.

[Koneho]

Been sick with a staph infection, barely muster the energy to work. Will update in a week when the meds kick in. Sorry guys/self

[furafura]

Take care mate, your health is the most important thing.

[Koneho]

Still feel awful. Today I did a few hundred Tagalog sentences in clozemaster. I also did read lang for a song and synched it (took ages) with the text. Decided to be more active in discords with filipinos. I guess I grew disillusioned but I used to love chatting for days. I got my hands on a really hefty grammar book with exercise (PUBLIC DOMAIN). I hate using pdfs on my tiny laptop and my work station isn't good for writing but once I feel better I'll use it to brush up my weak points.

No indonesian in a few days.

For those who don't know I'm sick and also had a friend lambast me for not learning useful languages. I did notice how weird it is. With a new language, one goes; WOW! I understood that. With a language you're competent (but not fluent) in, one tends to go; Ay nako bakit wala akong naintindihan ano ba yaaaan. Quite the struggle; I wonder the psychology behind the two mindsets.

Also, send coffee. I'm so tired. Being sick with a real infection blows! Good news is, doctor said its not the same strain that put me in hospital last year... and also I'm going to get an Mp3 for doing listening practice during walks.

Edit 1: 11:15 PM

So, I pimped my anki recently to be less dreadful. A japanese learner geek fixed some bugs with the algorithim that made it a chore (over showing cards). Anki still blows but its better than a lot of things. No mp3 player at the shop, gonna have to order one. Plan on doing my sentences while walking. Will continue doing readlang. Hope to pick up the indo and commit ~1 hour a day of active learning. Indo is purely for pleasure; although I often wish I could learn Japanese or Chinese instead; but my interest doesn't lie there. I did read a bit of Tae Kim's grammar guide and a lot clicked (J-Grammar isn't too far off from Tagalog, Japanese is a bit more inflectional/tagalog is a bit more isolating) and word order and lack of copula in tagalog but over all gives a nice base. Will ignore the tendency to wander. Found a pretty fire discord group with a lady whose trying to build a paying client base. I'm not paying (yet) but the lessons are top quality. I'm the only speaker she's marked "intermediate" out of the bunch of us. So much less toxic than dealing with the server ran by linguists who're overly nit picky.

Edit 2: Quarter past Midnight

Doing duo lingo Indo for fun. As much as I'd like to really study Chinese or something; I wouldn't be able to keep up with my tagalog which is trucking along. One user here suggested that I consume more native media; and I have been. Listening to music is a great way to flex my language; I've always viewed languages as tools to communicate, get what I want, say what I want. The only languages I've ever learned were fraught with loads of day to day interactions. The idea of laying back and consuming media? That is novel. As much as I love languages, I probably love linguistics more. So this is a good way to practice and consume. Especially since after a year and a half in Asia that perpetual foreigner feeling gets me down and I don't feel super social. I see a few apps that could be handy for CJK if I ever go for one in addition to my trusty glossika fsi etc materials I already use. Also those are big langs with resources like assimil etc that are great (despite chinese assimil having low reviews for being boring, if I could tough out the first half of Spanish FSI Basic I could tough out a boring L-R course like assimil). I've suggested to the new tagalog discord that we practice reading so maybe I can get some help with my literary constructions! Win!

[Koneho]

　Is this one of the add-ons from over on MIA? They really are lifesavers. My reviews went down almost immediately.

はい・そうです

Yeah you called it. Although I'm not doing Japanese I'm incorporating some of his methods. Can't say I like Matt as a person, but he does make good (if long winded) points about somethings.

[Koneho]

28/06/2019

Been doing a hell of a good job. I finally am in the groove and am feeling better by the day. Only thing now is to bang out a schedy and stick to it for my Indonesian and Tagalog. I made a discord server with resources and links to my memrise/readlang/duolingo stuff. Duo lingo gets a lot of hate but for a fun simple language like Indo I think it works great. Not gonna update too much since I can't keep track but apparently I'm studying a bit each day. I'm listening to my 50 lang/book 2 audios when doing paper work EN-ID and when I have free time I do ID-ID. My Mp3 player arrived and it is cute; mp3 playerku kecik sekali. I made a DISCORD Server for indo if anyone wants to join https://discord.gg/eJkJNF