Lisa's Language Log

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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 » Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:46 am

I'm past whatever that blockage was - wanting perfection, I think, I've accepted there are a few words I'll never get. Some words I study both ways, some I only have as german-english, some I learn plurals, some I don't, and I even let some errors slip by if I just don't care (really, what are the odds I'll need to know the plural of neck, anyway?) Anki is no longer a miserable drudgery. I am about where I can read (still having to lookup words, but not completely helpless without a dictionary). It's satisfying to get through a paragraph and basically understand. I'm about halfway through Hector's Reise, a French book translated to German, it's got a childrens-book vibe which makes it easier to read but it's more interesting than childrens books generally are. I have not read it in english which is kind of a first for me reading in spanish or german.

I don't think the thrill of reading in German is quite as rewarding as it was in Spanish - that was my first anki-vocab-enabled language, and the thrill of reading furr'n for the first time, well, it won't be as big a deal the second time around. I'm definitely not feeling as excited and motivated, but I've been doing anki almost daily for 15 months and I don't know what I'd do with those bits and bobs of time if I didn't study words...

I'm still baffled at how much harder German is than Spanish, but I've developed whatever brain pathways that now allow me to actually distinguish vorgehen, vorgeben, vergeben (and perhaps also vergehen but I haven't got to that one yet).

I haven't done much work on grammar and I'm not sure how that will happen. I'm not optimistic that my current strategy of waiting for kwiziq to develop a german course is likely to be successful.
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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 » Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:37 pm

Finally finished der mann in der braunen anzug - the one that had too difficult a vocab for me a couple of months ago! I can read German for enjoyment, enough understanding to get by without needing to look up words (look a lot longer than it did with Spanish). It feels like a victory! I have two other agatha christies in german, but they each by different translators. I have a lovely illustrated book on daily life in the middle ages that is has a yet more advanced vocabulary than I cannot manage now... so that's the next mountian to climb.

In Anki, up to 3137 words/7168 cards, plus some in the deck where I have segregated words that always give me trouble. I'm not working very intensely on this (it feels sort of pointless, really), and my rate of learning new words is pretty low; but keeping up with reviews is not painful and slow-but-steady and all that. More important now to read to get the words more fixed in context. There's an experience when you read along and while staring at (or hearing) a word you don't know... it somehow resolves into recognition and you can feel the synapse snapping into place. And there's a different funny experience when you see a word that you must have learned decades ago and completely lost but when you see it in context, from being an unknown word it slowly gets clearer and there's a sort of feeling about the word.

I'm not entirely sure what my goals are now, until I'm able to travel freely again. Aim for a certificate? Go back to Spanish and try to get my speaking up to some basic level? Study Italian - we were supposed to go to Italy again in 2021 but not feeling very optimistic - or French? Take a language break? We're going to get a puppy and perhaps I won't have time for anything for a while...
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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 » Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:40 am

German is winding down. I'd love to get to 4000 words in Anki but it's a few hundred away, that is not going to be quick since it's still hard to learn the words. I did get past the vortrag/vertrag/antrag/auftrag vortex but still falling into the sturzen black hole regularly.

I finished another Agatha Christie, böse unter der sun, which was not hard but a bit dull, and started my last one, der shattenhand, which is really difficult. I suspect it's what I'd call a good translation, in that it captures the mood and impression of the original, and uses a lot of slightly formal or older forms of words, as well as other parts in colloquial which I have to mentally read aloud to understand. Huge amounts of words I don't know, which is discouraging. The previous one was so easy! I've decided to not try to understand or learn all the words, and just keep going. Most of the time I get enough to follow.

I'm disappointed I'm not further along in German, after 11 months. I suppose it's partly covid that affected my motivation, I wasn't able to travel or do in-person conversation group. I thought German would be easier since I could already speak, but basic sentence production must be a completely different skill than vocabulary and grammar... I had spanish vocabulary and grammar and could not produce sentences very well. I will revisit german again once I've scheduled the trip, when it's safe to travel again, and I'm not thinking in 2021. Also we have a puppy now.

While I haven't officially changed languages, and I wasn't going to start French til the new year... well, I have pretty much started learning French already. I've got an Anki deck with audio, done some duolingo, and a few tests on the free version of kwiziq. This is the first online-learning language for me that's basically new, not a relearn.

Already I have noticed that duolingo is much less annoying for french than for german. Kwiziq though was more annoying, it was quite difficult to find a conjugation table for être, and there's not much help with vocabulary.

The problem with french is going to be pronunciation. Both german and spanish are pronounced pretty much like they are written, but french... not so much. So learning a word will involve learning the written and spoken as two different things. When I hear it, I can come up with the meaning, but when I see or picture the written word, I don't seem to be able to remember the sound. I might need to write it out phonetically or something for a memory aid.

The actual pronunciation is a worry too... I could already sort of do at least some of the sounds, and pronounce some words not too badly, but that's a long way from being able to pronounce any word, and I am not sure I can avoid problems. I don't really expect or want to be able to speak, but I don't want to map the written words to something completely wrong.
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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 » Sat Jan 09, 2021 8:41 am

After complaining about der shattenhand... I ended up finishing reading it last weekend (say the 3rd) which means it took only about a week to read, and I was sad to finish (it's a good story). I think during that time I crossed some mental threshold and am reading at a higher level now. Gone from disappointment to success! Since then I've been working on a cookbook of my mother's ca. 1960 and getting most of it... interesting cultural artifact of the time. I know there's some regional terms like Rahm for Sahne (the book is out of München), but I don't know how much, there are a lot of mysterious words. Like feingewiegter, which must mean finely chopped, but isn't in any of my dictionaries.

So now I've got some new energy to enjoy content in German, but the anki words... I am sooo tired of the same mistakes I make over and over. And bored with the same words I've seen so many times. Possibly anki itself is getting old; its going to be two years soon of daily reviews and periodic adding/fixing/arranging cards.

I'm sorta kinda working on French in parallel, but I can't say it's exciting me all that much. I think it's the spoken sounds, and possibly the quality of sound in the audio deck. I wish I could feel like I could skip learning this but I'd never unlearn it. I am already someone hampered by wanting to pronounce words that look spanish as if they were spanish.
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Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Nogon » Sat Jan 09, 2021 11:02 am

Lisa wrote:there are a lot of mysterious words. Like feingewiegter, which must mean finely chopped, but isn't in any of my dictionaries.

Or finely minced. One can use a "Wiegemesser" to do it, using the same movement as a cradle "Wiege".
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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 » Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:14 am

Still slogging along on German. One year anniversary. It's still hard. The Agatha Christie that I enjoyed so much was a more recent translation and I'm back to some older ones that are a bit grinding. I've now read 4.5 ACs, with 1.5 left to go and I have LOTR 1 in German, although I'm not sure I'll tackle that. <sigh> While I'm very goal oriented, I am not temperamentally inclined to goals that are hard and you have to work at steadily for a long time with no periodic achievements to add motivation. Which is why I've always given up on German and Spanish in my periodic attempts in the past.

As I'm kind of at a transition point... I took a couple of dialang tests, which gave me reading B1 and vocabulary B2. I was rated A2 in 2019. I can say that I was not really A2 back then, so perhaps A1 to B1 is a reasonable improvement. I started on the listening test but got lost somehow, I decided I was too tired to start over. The tests were hard, suppose it has to be. I'd like to go through the rest of the tests (which I suspect I will do much worse on), and perhaps the Spanish ones, to see how much I've lost. I feel like reading Spanish is easier than reading German, even now after a full year of working on German and ignoring Spanish. And I only spent 8 months getting to that point in Spanish (although I did work harder, didn't have a pandemic going on, and there are a lot more resources in reading materials and audiobooks, plus kwiziq, so it's not entirely fair).

sooo... where now? I'm not where I want to be in either German or Spanish, and I just don't have zeal for starting on French. I'm setup to switch easily to French but I feel like I should be putting the effort into German. Would taking a break entirely help? I need some purpose outside just self-entertainment, and without being able to travel or meetup with people I just don't see it. I suppose I could try video interactions again, italki or online meetup... after so much time on zoom this year, I'm a little more comfortable on video calls but they still are a poor replacement for being there; and I am not sure it would even do anything to improve my skills.
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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 Feb 04, 2021 8:22 am

I'm not winding down German. I do want to become fluent in German... and if not now, when? I could go back to Spanish... but shut in a box alone with no outside reason to learn anything, I'd rather be fluent in German. And I'd rather reach fluency in one language than put effort into learning more languages, alluring as it always is to start new projects rather than finish the old ones. If I was traveling it would be another story.

I started Udemy German courses - I got both beginner and intermediate (they were cheap); it will help to go through even the boring beginner bits and make sure I haven't missed anything. The first lessons (I'm up to 7 or so) have been dull, but the instructor speaks entirely in German but sufficiently that I have to focus; so it is good.

Also, I'm remembering how much more I read in Spanish than I yet have in German... It was so much easier in Spanish in olden days, when I could physically go to library and get a selection of children and adult fiction and nonfiction. But I've got a point where I can struggle my way through the German books I have.

While I still think German is much more difficult than Spanish (at least coming from English and my personal linguistic influences), I think I will withdraw my claim that my starting levels as a false beginner were comparable between the two.

According to my notes I started LOTR only about a month after I started studying Spanish using anki! I first felt like I could read German 4 months after starting the Anki deck, and even then, a "normal" book was too hard for me.

The only way it all makes sense is if I actually started with a massively larger latent Spanish vocabulary than German vocabulary. I recall when I was getting started with the spanish on anki, I rushed through a mass of easy words at a rapid rate; but the set of such easy german words has never been large enough to allow rushing. Partly gender needed work, since I didn't bother to learn them earlier times around (and it's almost effortless in Spanish) Thinking about it, I did spend twice as many years in High School studying Spanish as I did studying German, and with 6 different Spanish teachers and only the one German teacher for all three years; so my grammar might have been better learned before I forgot it all. While I had real-world German speaking skills that I didn't have in Spanish, that's not a skill that matters in my reading/listening comparison.
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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 » Fri Feb 05, 2021 5:57 pm

I have an unfortunate tendency to learn obscure but easy words, while feeling guilty about it since I'll never need them. The one I remember best in spanish was badger (tejon). There are several in German, Igel, Wappen, and sagenumwoben.

This week Igel has come up two times! Which is more hedgehogs than I read about in English in years. The first was in the Udemy lecture (words beginning with I), which had some odd choices (I am not learning the word for edema) but the second was actually in a book I'm reading, in the wild habitat of words. This was an Agatha Christie (now at 5.5 with .5 left) so perhaps a somewhat specialized genre. It was a shock to meet and I felt rather apologetic about all the negative thoughts I had about that word, that it was useless and I regretted learning it. That word looked more familiar than words in the rest of the sentence... negative attention is still attention.

Just goes to show that there is no word that is too obscure to learn.

I did learn Badger in German but that was trivially easy (Dachs, like the dog) and I haven't met it. Yet.
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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 Feb 14, 2021 9:03 pm

I was resisting starting LotR since it was only 2019 I read it in Spanish... but the other three books I have queued also seemed to have a bajillion words I don't know and aren't agatha christie, and I guess I prefer having the training wheels of a book I know well. And I have been enjoying it, actually. One of the joys of reading a foreign language is when you understand what you are reading, and already knowing the meaning of some of the sentences means I can deduce some word meanings. As usual after the first 20 pages it comes fairly easy, though my anki word list is growing much much faster than I can keep up with.

And what do you know, I found the word-I-love-to-hate, Igel. I didn't remember that being in the English, nor Spanish, so I double checked; these were a spotted toad to be eaten by grass-snakes, and sapo to be eaten by culebra de jardin, respectively. In German, it is Nackt-schnecke to be eaten by Igel. Hedgehogs must be more common in German gardens, or toads/frogs and snakes less common.

Generally though, I like the translation; the poetry has a more rhythm than the very flat translation into Spanish. However, it looks like the Spanish translation is more simple and straightforward than the German one vocabulary-wise. E.g. "proud and great" is "hochmütigen und hochmögenden" in the German version and "orgullosos y esplédidos" in Spanish.

I'm trying to stick with Udema beginner German, but too much basic vocab and not enough grammar. I think it will be helpful to grind through anyway but it's hard to make time for video, and I might start skipping the more vocab-centric segments.

Someone pointed out that if I want grammar, I should work though a book and I'm afraid while unwelcome (write on paper with a pen!), it's good advice. I started on my old German workbook (I cannot bring myself to write in it, which is one of the problems...), particularly the production exercises, and have been putting declensions, pronouns and drills into anki. When I was a wee lass I thought, save time and don't bother to learn the plural-familiar form, who would ever use that. I found I was wrong, I spent most of my talking time with groups of relatives and that was the case I needed most. But I'm still very weak there. Next up is adjective endings.

Have been considering an Italki tutor but the picture for German is very different than Spanish... Spanish tutors being abundant and inexpensive, and German tutors fewer and much pricier. And I expect the cheaper ones aren't as good as the expensive ones.
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chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby chove » Sun Feb 14, 2021 10:58 pm

I find Spanish texts easier to read than German ones, I've assumed it was because of the Spanish cognate discount?#
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