Lisa's Language Log

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Lisa
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Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Mon Jun 21, 2021 6:42 am

Finished Harry Potter, also finished Island of the Blue Dophins which (a year later) was very easy to read. The grown-up books are still daunting, though, so I'm not currently reading anything. It was so nice with Spanish - so easy to get a wide variety of paper and audiobooks. Well, the library branch I go to got rid of their foreign language section, so it wouldn't have been quite so easy now. But still, big difference in availability.

Anki has got, probably briefly, into steady state... which is weird! 250-300 cards per day which takes 20-30 minutes and I can get through them all. I've got words sorted into 6 working decks: priority, new, learning, troublesome, easy, and known, so I can pick whatever challenge level I feel prepared for. 10 new words plus 10 new easy words per day. Whenever I have trouble... e.g. similar-looking words with multiple definitions, like eingehen, eintreten, einfallen, I've been creating individual phrase cards for each meaning (well, not all, but maybe 3), e.g. beinahe eingegangen, tritt vielleicht nie ein; I learn them both ways. Since the phrases are more unique and have some rhythm but are short, they are much easier to learn. It's not going fast, but I'm working through some of the common verbs that have given me so much trouble. Problem words that are rare (thanks, LotR...) I set aside and don't study. I sometimes wonder what I was _thinking_ when I added them.

Tried some intensive listening. Found a 3-minute clip level B1, that I could tolerate listening to over and over, and I've listened about 10 times. I could sort of get most the first time (it's the speed that's the main problem), and it's gotten more understandable over the repeats. Unfortunately there's no transcript and I still can't catch some of the words. I mean to keep going but it doesn't seem to happen. I should look for a clip with a transcript so I don't feel stuck...
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:56 pm

Anki steady state continued; but it's getting tedious, every morning I look at it and sigh instead of looking forward to it. I need to mix it up somehow. I'm a sprinter and anki is really better for marathoners.

After reading the little princess (enjoyed a lot), I also just finished the final unread Agatha Christie (dreizehn bei tisch). Now, I can more often guess the meanings of unknown words from word segments - that was what I could do in Spanish, and previously not do in German, and makes a difference. I wrote down words to add to Anki for a while, but then I stopped - they are almost always very obscure, and I really won't want to keep overloading on obscure words when there are plenty of common words giving me trouble.

Since I am out of easier german books til next week, I figured I could re-read one, and I picked up the Shattenhand since I enjoyed it so much and I think it was one of the first. Much easier now, of course! I'm finding words I've learned recently and wondering how I got through the first time, and I'm finding words I don't know at all. Still, not bothering to write anything down to learn, since Anki seems like drudgery.

To make Anki fun again, I suppose I could sweep the mostly-known words into a corner and turn them off, and just work on fun new words - and perhaps add new words in phrases rather than just as words. A fair amount of time are things like the plural of "beard" which seem like a waste of time, but sometimes the need for the plurals is unexpected. I was entirely baffled by "getäfelten Felder der Decke" - it was never going to be easy (I read the last word as tablecloth), but I did not recognize at all the plural of Feld. I learn singular->plural but not plural-singular...
This was one of those phrases that are easy to skip over (it was just what was getting stared at, so it didn't really matter if it was a tablecloth), but that Felder drove me crazy since it looked like something I should know.
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rdearman
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby rdearman » Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:26 pm

If you don't want anki to be a torture machine, then learn to disable words. I use android version and I enable the gestures. I have then turned off every gesture except "swipe-right" which suspends the card. Card suspension basically does the same as deletion, but is one step less. I changed my settings so that leech cards are just marked, not removed or suspended. Periodically I go to the desktop version and list all the leech cards. I copy the answer from the back to the front and remove the leech status. This means all the horrible leech cards appear again, but I don't have to answer them the answer is already there. So I press good and get on with it. This gives me the advantage of seeing leeches again, but without the stress of trying to remember them. Because of the way SRS works, I eventually remember them just because I see them (and the answer) all the time.

But if I get sick of a card, whoosh! Swipe-right.

I never (well, almost never) use single word cards. Dull, dull, dull. I just use phrases. The advantage of that is if you have a 6 word phrase, then you've got exposure to 5 words for free. :)
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Lisa
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Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:37 am

rdearman wrote:If you don't want anki to be a torture machine, then learn to disable words. I use android version and I enable the gestures. I have then turned off every gesture except "swipe-right" which suspends the card. Card suspension basically does the same as deletion, but is one step less. I changed my settings so that leech cards are just marked, not removed or suspended. Periodically I go to the desktop version and list all the leech cards. I copy the answer from the back to the front and remove the leech status. This means all the horrible leech cards appear again, but I don't have to answer them the answer is already there. So I press good and get on with it. This gives me the advantage of seeing leeches again, but without the stress of trying to remember them. Because of the way SRS works, I eventually remember them just because I see them (and the answer) all the time.

But if I get sick of a card, whoosh! Swipe-right.

I never (well, almost never) use single word cards. Dull, dull, dull. I just use phrases. The advantage of that is if you have a 6 word phrase, then you've got exposure to 5 words for free. :)


Do you have your words both ways (NL->TL and TL->NL)? I don't learn single words well if it's only TL->NL, and long sentences TL->NL are too easy... and also not really learning, just pattern matching (at least I think that's how it's worked for me). And there's a size limit on what I can remember NL->TL without pain, once it's more than 4 words there are too many possible ways to get details wrong. I guess I'm not eligible for free lunches er words...

I haven't tried "cheat" cards... interesting idea. For many cards I have a TL example sentence on the TL->NL card, and I sometimes do allow myself to cheat and actually read the sentence from which guessing is usually easy. I could just let myself cheat more :-)
Many of my fails are bad pattern matching, e.g. I certainly know Klinge/blade, but every 6-7 reviews I think it's doorbell/Klingel, and have to fail myself. Possibly I should let it go... (I use to have a t-shirt that said "Does anal-retentive have a hyphen?")

What I do to disable cards, is to push them into a separate deck with no reviews and no new cards. I can work on these decks if I finish scheduled work, and want to study more...
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rdearman
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby rdearman » Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:54 am

Generally I do NL->TL since that is what I'm going to need when I talk.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:48 am

In Spanish, a head of garlic is separated into teeth (dientes). This is a wonderful term, much better than the English cloves (cloves are not at all like the separated garlic bits).
I've just learned that in German, you separate a head of garlic into toes (Zehen).
My preferred hardneck garlic has very large, toe-like cloves. But the softneck garlic found in stores does have cloves that are smaller and tooth-like - well, like a dog tooth. Hardnecks prefer a damp, cool climate, while softnecks like warmer places like Gilroy.
Hard not to think that differences in locally grown garlic varieties shaped this piquant language detail...
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Jul 15, 2021 6:53 am

Lisa wrote:In Spanish, a head of garlic is separated into teeth (dientes). This is a wonderful term, much better than the English cloves (cloves are not at all like the separated garlic bits).
I've just learned that in German, you separate a head of garlic into toes (Zehen).
My preferred hardneck garlic has very large, toe-like cloves. But the softneck garlic found in stores does have cloves that are smaller and tooth-like - well, like a dog tooth. Hardnecks prefer a damp, cool climate, while softnecks like warmer places like Gilroy.
Hard not to think that differences in locally grown garlic varieties shaped this piquant language detail...
I looked up clove in my dictionary:
ORIGIN
Old English clufu, of Germanic origin, corresponding to the first element of German Knoblauch (altered from Old High German klovolouh), and the base of cleave.
While knoblauch translates to garlic, lauch translates to leek, and cleave translates to klieben so perhaps 'cloven-leek' is how we should think of garlic :-)

EDIT
Alas when I look up garlic my computer's dictionary, the tidy cloven-leek falls apart :-(
ORIGIN
Old English gārlēac, from gār ‘spear’ (because the shape of a clove resembles the head of a spear) + lēac ‘leek’.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:28 pm

I think I've got anki stabilized again. The problem - I think - was a whole lot of cognates that were easy, which added the boring factor; and I was adding new cognates fast so it was tedious; and I've been adding too many phrases which do take more mental energy so it got hard - having to get the right preposition - why are german prepositions so difficult to map vs. Spanish! - the right adjective ending and the right noun ending. The verb that is the target for the phrase ends up being the easy part.

So I reduced the new card rate, turned off most of the new cognates and some of the phrases, and for new cards, making sure the phrases are mixed with a greater number of words. Unfortunately I'm at an awkward stage of reading so the only words I find that I don't understand in context are pretty rare and difficult and I don't want to to there again. I was bound to get low on those concrete nouns I like most.

Quite a lot of time fiddling with Anki. Perhaps one reason people don't like Anki is that if you don't get things just right it is too boring, too tedious, too much or too little. I expect I have - over the course of time - spent more time adding cards, updating cards, fixing the card fields and layouts, and rearranging cards between decks, than I have spent actually studying. Partly since I tend to start with public decks and add, remove, and edit fields and data to get them just how I like them, or go and do a bunch of work to tune it when the flow is not working. I enjoy that kind of thing - alas - even more than actually studying the words...

Finished Shattenhand and started Nikotin. I'm going to need to do a little grammar work, sometimes I understand the meaning of the sentence, possibly just from context, and know the individual words, but I can't see how the individual words work together to create the sentence's meaning. Possibly some intensive study on that kind of sentence, a sort of bottom-up grammar study, will be more interesting and useful than top-down study of grammar lessons. I googled the use of aber as an adjective... and found a very useful answer on the standexchange german forum.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Mon Aug 09, 2021 11:27 pm

Nikotin was not such an enjoyable read and I had to push myself to finish, but it's finally done. Reading a book in a foreign language is a different experience - since you are moving so much slower, you get to look around and see the scenery more... The degree of difference in my enjoyment of say Nikotin and Schattenhand books was not very obvious when reading them in English.

I started a new book Sommer am Meer which I haven't read in English which adds some challenge, but so far it's not very interesting.

I've started listening to Krumme Haus, and while the speaker has a sort of fuzzier voice, it's pleasant. It's much more challenging to understand than Orient Express... the speaker for Orient Express has much clearer enunciation, and also well I have listened to it two or three times before. I'm considering if I shouldn't make more effort to repeat listening on these rather than starting new things.

On Anki I'm currently trying to sort out problem words, so not adding new challenging words. Currently I have about mature 4500 words (each with 1-5 cards), and another 600 immature, but a couple of hundred... well, they just need attention, they are too common to just throw up my hands. The helper phrases are pretty effective. I also think my brain has finally started rewiring for those confusing word segments; I'm still having troubles, but at least vor/ver seem to have sorted themselves out.
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Sonjaconjota
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Sonjaconjota » Tue Aug 10, 2021 6:48 am

Lisa wrote:Tried some intensive listening. Found a 3-minute clip level B1, that I could tolerate listening to over and over, and I've listened about 10 times. I could sort of get most the first time (it's the speed that's the main problem), and it's gotten more understandable over the repeats. Unfortunately there's no transcript and I still can't catch some of the words. I mean to keep going but it doesn't seem to happen. I should look for a clip with a transcript so I don't feel stuck...

If you need transcriptions for a short audio or video, I can recommend the exchange platform rhinospike.
For German, I would also like to offer my help with transcribing, just not during August, because I'm on holiday.
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