Конец игры

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Ольга
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6206
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Ольга » Sat Nov 04, 2017 10:29 am

Congrats. You are doing great! :D
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Output Challenge 2018
Hours of Recorded Speech: 0 / 50
Words: 4732 / 50000

Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:41 pm

L-R in Russian got temporarily derailed by this six week challenge. It's too tiring to do hours of Indonesian GLOSS, then turn around and try to read Russian seriously.

So lately I've been watching Russian TV. I saw the 8 part Russian Revolution documentary series, plus the one on Trotsky, the one on Beria, the one on Zhdanov. Comprehension was decent (for me). I guess 35%. I also do a little Russianpod101 (not enough) and anki.

I only recently committed to using Anki for real, and I've noticed something strange. I have more Indonesian words than for the other two languages (due to the challenge -- very temporary condition), but the pattern is curious:

Indonesian: 1111 cards, 9 leeches
Italian: 203 cards, 0 leeches
Russian: 654 cards, 54 leeches

So ... what is it about the Russian language and leeches? It seems like almost all of my leech cards are verbs. For some reason, all Russian verbs look very similar to me -- four to six syllables long, and they all start with П. Ugh!

Edit: Edit to mention that I took inspiration from Expugnator and got my own copy of Russian in Exercises. I finished the first 9 exercises! Only 929 to go, lol.
4 x

Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Thu Dec 07, 2017 5:13 pm

I finished reading The Sour Lemon Score in English, while listening to Похищение кислого лимона in Russian (L2/R1). I then went back and listened to Похищение кислого лимона again in the car. It's a short novel, so the unabridged audio is less than four hours.

Was it a useful exercise? I don't know. Is L2/R1 any better than L2/R2? I don't know.

But it seemed useful. It was a faithful translation, so I was able to map what I was hearing in Russian to what I was reading in English pretty well. I never felt like I was zoning out and just reading the English while ignoring the Russian audio. And then, when I went back and listened to the Russian audio by itself, it seemed like my comprehension got a boost. Not an enormous boost. Probably I would have understood 20% of the novel if I listened to it cold, not knowing the story (and no visual queues from TV). And probably my comprehension was in the 40-50% range on the second listen.

Probably the thing to do now would be to listen to Похищение кислого лимона ten more times.

Instead I'll read The Outfit while listening to Мафия.

The Parker novels by "Richard Stark" are interesting. They belong to the "hard-boiled" genre so the style is minimalistic to begin with, but the author experimented with an ultra-minimalist style when he wrote them.* They are dry, austere ... and actually perfect for language learning. There's no fluff, no flurry of adjectives and adverbs. There's just action and dialogue.


* They are starting to get some interest from academia. Just like academia has realized they completely missed the boat with Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler while wasting a lot of time with more upscale, pretentious authors that have already faded into obscurity.
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

DaveBee
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Re: Конец игры

Postby DaveBee » Thu Dec 07, 2017 6:08 pm

Xmmm wrote:The Parker novels by "Richard Stark" are interesting. They belong to the "hard-boiled" genre so the style is minimalistic to begin with, but the author experimented with an ultra-minimalist style when he wrote them.* They are dry, austere ... and actually perfect for language learning. There's no fluff, no flurry of adjectives and adverbs. There's just action and dialogue.


* They are starting to get some interest from academia. Just like academia has realized they completely missed the boat with Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler while wasting a lot of time with more upscale, pretentious authors that have already faded into obscurity.
There used to be a publishing brand (No Exit Press?) that re-issued a lot of hard-boiled crime stuff in the UK. Paul Cain's Seven Slayers comes to mind. I think they also published some of Lawrence Block's stuff, but the older re-issues were one or two pounds cheaper than a contemporary novel, hurrah!

Penguin put out some of CS Forester (Hornblower Books) old crime novels a year or so back. A different world, but good stuff. Plain Murder would be a good stocking filler :-)
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Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:43 pm

I'm starting new year resolutions early. 2018 is going to be the year I finish 'studying' Russian.

I'm happy with the detour I took to devote around 300 hours to listening only. There is no question my listening has improved significantly. But experiments with Russianpod101, and TV with subtitles indicate that my main listening problem is still vocabulary. If I know the words, I understand the sentence. If I don't, I don't. I've gone through a frequency list, first 1600 words, and there were roughly 400 words I wasn't comfortable with. Looking through all 10000 words on the list, that ratio seems to more or less hold all the way up. I.e., I know more than half the words between 9000 and 10000. It would be better to know 100% of the first 5000 words, than 50% of the first 20000 words, but my situation is the latter.

I blame this on reading at too high a level too early, and on reading too narrowly--for a long period of time. At this point I'm going to solve the problem by brute force. I will just walk through a frequency list and any words I'm not comfortable with will go into Anki.

I also need to learn all the rhyming Russian proverbs so I can talk like Круглый in Брат.

2018 goals:

: 40 / 938 Finish Russian in Exercises
: 6 / 36 Finish Modern Russian
: 70 / 300 Finish Glossika
: 0 / 10 Finish extensive reading of five novels, two times each
: 0 / 36500 Write 36500 words in Russian, self-correct with languagetool.org
: 1300 / 5000 Get 5000 words into Anki
: 2 / 30 Listen to ten audiobooks, three times each

All this adds up to about 1000 hours of work which is why I have to start now. :)

My hope is that in 2019, I will sign up for two hours a week of Italki--and other than that, I will just be consuming native content indefinitely.
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Tue Jan 02, 2018 9:01 pm

Я принимаю вызов Бруна Угле.

Я буду писать этот журнал по-русски впредь.

: 1695 / 5000 Anki cards
: 194 / 10000 Pages read extensively
: 0 / 200 Italki hours
: 6 / 36 Modern Russian
: 90 / 938 Russian in Exercises
: 408 / 50000 Words written
: 70 / 312 Glossika
0 x

Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Fri Jan 12, 2018 3:43 am

У меня слишком много веши делать в русски язык.

Я закончил одна глава «Современный русский» ... препозиционный случай. Он съел пять часов.


: 1868 / 5000 Anki cards
: 194 / 10000 Pages read extensively
: 0 / 200 Italki hours
: 7 / 36 Modern Russian
: 90 / 938 Russian in Exercises
: 895 / 50000 Words written
: 73 / 312 Glossika
1 x

Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел


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