Back to the roots and water them with coffee

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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jul 03, 2021 12:12 am

I got myself a language time tracking app, it is nice. And it shows clearly that I really need to speed up my learning. This weak, it is not bad but it is still faaar bellow the needed amount of time. I am doing quite well with vocab, I am struggling much worse with grammar learning, and the main challenge of next week will be heavy coursebook study. But learning (or rather relearning so far) the vocab beforehand should make it a bit easier. (568 words from the DaF Kompakt so far)
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I love Language Learning with Netflix. It is tempting though to fall for the trap of trying to save everything for Anki. I cannot afford to spread myself among too many SRS platforms and sources. It is also not needed, I need to remind myself than just watching worked just fine in the past.

It's great that I now have the double subtitles, and they are not in the main picture, which really helps. For now, I am listening, it automatically stops after every line of subtitles, so I can read them in peace and read the English translation as needed. The only thing I really miss about this simple use of the tool: I would like a much smaller font for English, to not attract my attention and really be there just in case of need, hopefully less and less.

But not having the subtitles in the main picture, that is already awesome and it really helps with the usual complaint "but subtitles turn the listening practice into just reading practice". And I think I am starting to understand a bit better!!! I'm looking forward to the point at which I'll turn off the video stopping feature. But for now, it's really extremely helpful, much more than trying to slow the audio down (which is much more unnatural, and it is also annoying).

They also have paid features, which I haven't decided for yet. But they plan to use the money also at solving another usual issue: the difference between the dubbing and subtitles, due to them coming from two different translations. They want to hire people to transcribe the dubbings.

Now I just need this to work for other platforms too (yeah, there are tons of stuff on Netflix. But it's not the only thing in existence). And outlawing of the geoblocking, to get all the dubbings and all the Netflix content (will come handy, when I finally get to start Hebrew. It is a bit sad, that I need to postpone this again).
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Rant alert: the Mezzofanti Guild blog by Mr. Donovan Nigel.

I used to really like this blog, it gave me a lot of useful info or at least food for thought and inspiration. I sometimes really disagreed with the author (not hard to guess what), and I really considered a few of their opinions were a bit unfortunate (for example I really hate it, when people confuse "asocial" and "antisocial", it is a harmful thing in the media and society). But most of the content was high quality, he did solid reviews that gave people enough info to draw their own conclusions to try something or not, and his success especially with Arabic was phenomenal. Really someone to inspire others!

But as it happens, he's clearly decided to turn the blog into a more massive thing, with tons of guest blog post authors, and perhaps he's trying to get as much traffic as possible. But I haven't seen much of true advertisements, so no idea why he's turning it into a trashbin.

Really, is it the same person who used to give lists of high quality coursebooks, tips on solid digital tools, on immersion, detailed reviews, and well thought out essays on language learning? And now there are extremely shitty blog posts. A blog post teaching the months and seasons in French. A blog post teaching how to thank people in Spanish. Really? Is the purpose of a language blog to just copy the first unit of beginner coursebooks?

And then a really weird one. Tips on learning Medical Spanish. The person is probably not a medical professional, otherwise they'd know that telling people how awesome is finding up unknown vocab in emergency situations is dangerously idiotic (and actually the opposite of "communicating seamlessly"). They recommend a few good but rather random websites, ok. But then they recommend not too great other resources, and they totally omit the most obvious and useful ones. They don't give any clear path on how to become capable to do one's healthcare job in another language. It's not that complicated actually, it requires time, efforts, and a totally different approach than what this blog might make you believe.

And if you just start randomly playing with a translation/dictionary app while meeting your patient (especially in a sort of pressing situation), you'll just be making a very unprofessional impression in the best case, or you'll be making a sloppy and slow job in the worse case.

The moment with the patient in the same room is the show time. You need to be prepared to do well without any language tool, and to understand possible unknown bits from context. (Don't worry, it is highly unlikely the patient would be telling you something immediately life/death deciding, that wouldn't be either Latin based (especially a hispanophone patient) or also observable non verbally.) And this blog post doesn't advise you how to get to that point. In some cases, you may be pushed to use even a language you speak not too well, but it may be the best option in the given situation (It happened to me too). Well, then you do with what you've got. And leave any postponeable work for later, when you can get help. (Sometimes you don't get it and it becomes complicated).

No wonder so many professionals struggle with this, when such a dumb blogpost is supposed to be a source of info.

Oh, and there's more of those dumb posts. How to say hello, how to say good night, how to say "I love you", . Really, these people are able to dilute the first unit of any coursebook into a hundred blog posts. And then some people find it weird, that I recommend others to just get a damn textbook instead of learning from random online sources :-D :-D :-D

And all these trash posts seem to be from this year. So sad to see a great blog go like this :-(

P.S: Hmm, there is one good guest blog post on Amharic resources, it looks like the old Mezzo guild posts. So, not everything is trash. But I think it will take a long time, before I visit the blog again. If.
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby jeffers » Sat Jul 03, 2021 7:05 am

Cavesa wrote:Really, is it the same person who used to give lists of high quality coursebooks, tips on solid digital tools, on immersion, detailed reviews, and well thought out essays on language learning? And now there are extremely shitty blog posts. A blog post teaching the months and seasons in French. A blog post teaching how to thank people in Spanish. Really? Is the purpose of a language blog to just copy the first unit of beginner coursebooks?


It sounds to me like they are trying to increase their Google hits by having posts on commonly searched questions (seasons, etc), or being one of very few sites to get results on specific niche topics (e.g. medical Spanish).

Thanks for the reminder about Language Learning with Netflix. I haven't used it yet because my school laptop doesn't allow me to install extensions. However, I've now installed it on my wife's laptop, so I'll be continuing Lupin using it. How do you like to use LLN? Do you usually use auto-pause? Do you vary whether you use this? Do you find yourself replaying lines often? I'm finding line by line mode to be distracting and slow, especially since it pauses at things like sound effects, e.g. [grincement]. I suppose it depends on how well you know the language.
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby rdearman » Sat Jul 03, 2021 9:12 am

Cavesa wrote:And if you just start randomly playing with a translation/dictionary app while meeting your patient (especially in a sort of pressing situation), you'll just be making a very unprofessional impression in the best case, or you'll be making a sloppy and slow job in the worse case.

Veterinarians manage to do diagnosis without a language app, and on more than one species of animal. :)
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby luke » Sat Jul 03, 2021 10:48 am

rdearman wrote:Veterinarians manage to do diagnosis without a language app, and on more than one species of animal. :)


Agreed. In The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, he didn't use a language app to talk to the animals.

Also agree with cavesa's gripe that sometimes bad blog posts dilute the value of a good site.

cavesa, I'm curious what app your using to track how much time to give to various language learning activities.
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tiia
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby tiia » Sat Jul 03, 2021 10:51 am

I think it's a biased thing. As an exchange student I had to use English, when visiting the local (Finnish) doctors. None of us spoke English as their native language and without the use of Google translate or sanakirja.org (basic multilingual dictionary) the diagnosis would not have been understood. Seeing the word in German made at least 100% clear what we were talking about. And it wasn't even too complicated.

It depends so much on the language level of the doctor and the patient, which language is the most useful in the given situation. It should also be considered, that the patient may not know the medical term, although it's their native language. Even when dealing with doctors in your native language there can and there have been misunderstandings. The reason may not (just) be the specialist vocabulary.

I'd assume that one should also differentiate between the situation of a doctor working abroad vs. working in their country of origin but dealing with patients that do not speak the local language. In the latter case using a dictionary is much more acceptable than in the first one.
Also the language of communication with other doctors will depend on this. I assume that even in their native language doctors (and other professionals) will adjust their way of speech according to the target group. -> The used vocabulary will vary etc.
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby lysi » Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:23 pm

Cavesa wrote:I got myself a language time tracking app, it is nice. And it shows clearly that I really need to speed up my learning. This weak, it is not bad but it is still faaar bellow the needed amount of time. I am doing quite well with vocab, I am struggling much worse with grammar learning, and the main challenge of next week will be heavy coursebook study. But learning (or rather relearning so far) the vocab beforehand should make it a bit easier. (568 words from the DaF Kompakt so far)


Awesome. Time tracking apps are the way to go. Which one are you using? I use Clockify.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jul 03, 2021 9:44 pm

jeffers wrote:It sounds to me like they are trying to increase their Google hits by having posts on commonly searched questions (seasons, etc), or being one of very few sites to get results on specific niche topics (e.g. medical Spanish).

Thanks for the reminder about Language Learning with Netflix. I haven't used it yet because my school laptop doesn't allow me to install extensions. However, I've now installed it on my wife's laptop, so I'll be continuing Lupin using it. How do you like to use LLN? Do you usually use auto-pause? Do you vary whether you use this? Do you find yourself replaying lines often? I'm finding line by line mode to be distracting and slow, especially since it pauses at things like sound effects, e.g. [grincement]. I suppose it depends on how well you know the language.


Yeah, they are perhaps trying to get more Google hits, but it even looks purposeless, as there are not that many advertisements or something. So, I can't see even an unpleasant reason for this fall in content quality.

As I described, I use it right now exactly for watching, with stops after every sub line, because my German is simply not too good. You're absolutely right it is annoying in some ways (the sound effects, flow of the dialogues and story etc), and this discomfort further motivates me to improve :-D I don't plan to use the vocab exporting to flashcards function for now, I don't have time to work with that, and it is not a priority. Learning in context is my priority with Star Trek, improvement of listening comprehension, automatisation of stuff, and motivation to learn German.

I definitely wouldn't use the automatic pauses for a more advanced language. And I think the only catch of using LLN might be harder weaning of subtitles for many learners. It's just a bit too comfortable for people beyond a certain point.
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The app I use for tracking activities: Lingo Journal. It's ok, my only complaint is lack of weekly overviews (there is only daily, monthly, yearly, but I would be the most interested in weakly ones), but it is otherwise a good app, for tracking various learning activities in various languages. It is easy to use, which is another plus. I don't feel like learning to use a complicated planning and tracking app.

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tiia wrote:I think it's a biased thing. As an exchange student I had to use English, when visiting the local (Finnish) doctors. None of us spoke English as their native language and without the use of Google translate or sanakirja.org (basic multilingual dictionary) the diagnosis would have not been understood. Seeing the word in German made at least 100% clear what we were talking about. And it wasn't even too complicated.

It depends so much on the language level of the doctor and the patient, which language is the most useful in the given situation. It should also be considered, that the patient may not know the medical term, although it's their native language. Even when dealing with doctors in your native language there can and there have been misunderstandings. The reason may not (just) be the specialist vocabulary.

I'd assume that one should also differentiate between the situation of a doctor working abroad vs. working in their country of origin but dealing with patients that do not speak the local language. In the latter case using a dictionary is much more acceptable than in the first one.
Also the language of communication with other doctors will depend on this. I assume that even in their native language doctors (and other professionals) will adjust their way of speech according to the target group. -> The used vocabulary will vary etc.


Sorry, and I am not trying to sound rude, but I think I am the last person, who needs to be lectured on the diversity of situations in plurilingual communication in medicine. I know all that (I have first hand experience vast majority of them, on both sides of the language barrier and both from the doctor's and patient's side), and I claim that the blog post is horrible in regards to all those situations.

I don't want to write a too long reply (the original attempt was a too long comment :-D), so I'll try to sum it up:

-simplifying stuff for a patient actually requires more skill with the language, not less. The Latin based specialized vocabulary is only a small part of the "medical language" that needs to be learnt. That's a common misconception, that even many courses of medical foreign language fall for. The big, latin based, "complicated" words are actually the easiest part of it all. Either you can simplify a complicated message appropriately for the patient, or you can simplify it appropriately for a doctor without the necessary linguistic skills, but those two simplifications are totally different, and only one is helpful.

-some situations allow some dictionary use, many don't. A bit of dictionary using is totally ok in many situations, too much (and what is too much, that depends on the situation. In some, even one word search is too much) is just a sign of incompetence of the doctor, who should leave someone more linguistically equiped to handle this. If nobody (a medical translator, a medical professional speaking the language) is available soon enough, the job will be suboptimal and the patient's rights violated. You sometimes have no other choice, sure. You try to do the best possible with what you've got. But that doesn't make "just use a translation app and learn from that" advice right.

-the differenct situations like a doctor abroad vs doctor at home with a foreign patient, that doesn't really matter in this discussion imho. Either you are good enough for the job at hand, or you're not. The language learning part is not different at all.

-Don't forget that this is not a blog post for doctors in highly linguistically varied areas, trying to communicate a bit with any patient coming through their door, even if they happen to speak Klingon. It is for an already convinced public, who wants to really learn medical Spanish. People, who are supposedly serious about this, have picked one language, and want to become capable of doing their job well in it. And the blog post doesn't serve them well. That's the issue, the mismatch between the purpose and the content.
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby rdearman » Sat Jul 03, 2021 10:09 pm

Having written a blog, I suspect the problem is more to do with just racking your brain to think of something else to say that you haven't already said, than taking the easy way out with a quick "filler" post. :)
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby tiia » Sun Jul 04, 2021 10:49 am

Cavesa wrote:Sorry, and I am not trying to sound rude, but I think I am the last person, who needs to be lectured on the diversity of situations in plurilingual communication in medicine. I know all that (I have first hand experience vast majority of them, on both sides of the language barrier and both from the doctor's and patient's side), and I claim that the blog post is horrible in regards to all those situations.


Just to make it clear: I do agree, that the post doesn't serve it's purpose (though I cannot say much about the listed sources there). I never meant to lecture you on those things, knowing that you have way more first hand experience than most of us here. Anyway, if that's how you understood it, I'm sorry.

Cavesa wrote:-Don't forget that this is not a blog post for doctors in highly linguistically varied areas, trying to communicate a bit with any patient coming through their door, even if they happen to speak Klingon. It is for an already convinced public, who wants to really learn medical Spanish. People, who are supposedly serious about this, have picked one language, and want to become capable of doing their job well in it. And the blog post doesn't serve them well. That's the issue, the mismatch between the purpose and the content.

I think he's not making clear who's the target group here, setting it larger than it in fact is. I assume that he's having doctors in the US in mind, who may have to deal with (monolingual) Spanish speaking patients from time to time.

Cavesa wrote:-simplifying stuff for a patient actually requires more skill with the language, not less. The Latin based specialized vocabulary is only a small part of the "medical language" that needs to be learnt. That's a common misconception, that even many courses of medical foreign language fall for. The big, latin based, "complicated" words are actually the easiest part of it all. Either you can simplify a complicated message appropriately for the patient, or you can simplify it appropriately for a doctor without the necessary linguistic skills, but those two simplifications are totally different, and only one is helpful.

Absolutely agreed. The blog post is totally lacking the differenciation to whom you are talking to. This is by far not limited to the medical field, but it's neglected all the time.
When it comes to the "Latin based specialised vocabulary" I guess it's similar to technical words in other fields: They're teaching you substantives and neglect the rest. But in order to really work you need the right verbs and adjectives as well.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:26 am

tiia wrote:Just to make it clear: I do agree, that the post doesn't serve it's purpose (though I cannot say much about the listed sources there). I never meant to lecture you on those things, knowing that you have way more first hand experience than most of us here. Anyway, if that's how you understood it, I'm sorry.

And I am sorry that my answer sounded a bit more angry than intended.

I think he's not making clear who's the target group here, setting it larger than it in fact is. I assume that he's having doctors in the US in mind, who may have to deal with (monolingual) Spanish speaking patients from time to time.

Exactly. It is a population of doctors (but also nurses and other healthcare professionals), with rather clear goals and needs. The readers are mostly people, who get mostly anglophone patients (and even non natives with various levels of English), and regular contact with hispanophone patients. They are probably an important minority in the town of a healthcare worker, who decides to learn Spanish.

That makes it much easier than in many European settings (and probably other regions as well), but we should also take into account the typical cultural difference we see all the time on the forum and elsewhere: Europeans tend to appreciate more lower levels in several languages (because we have uses for such a skill set, and most of us are not English natives), while the North Americans tend to value high level in one much more (because otherwise they don't need to bother because of others learning English to some extent and wanting to practice, because they have fewer uses for a wider selection of languages due to geography, and because of the stronger "skills are for money" mentality).

That's why I'd expect such a blog post to be really on "how to become good enough at Spanish to really do my job well even in it, whenever the need arises." Not such a superficial chaos.

Absolutely agreed. The blog post is totally lacking the differenciation to whom you are talking to. This is by far not limited to the medical field, but it's neglected all the time.
When it comes to the "Latin based specialised vocabulary" I guess it's similar to technical words in other fields: They're teaching you substantives and neglect the rest. But in order to really work you need the right verbs and adjectives as well.

Yes, the focus on nouns, and even just one subset of nouns, that's a huge problem. A typical Medical Foreign Language course, is very noun oriented (but verbs and adjectives are even more important and under-taught), very Latin-like nouns oriented (but the patient will use different nouns), and very theoretical instead of focusing on the communication situations. And when presenting those, very superficial. No focus on the written professional language either.

It's a bit comforting that it's not just in the healthcare field. :-D Not that I'd wish something bad to other professionals either, but it is comforting.
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I really dislike German, but I keep going. Much slower than needed. But I keep going. Vocab is the easiest to learn right now, Memrise is ok for that (I haven't finished the first 8 units yet, but I've covered a half and well).

A Grammatik is great (Finally someone explained to me trennbare Verben with some sense! and not just like "here is a list to memorise"!), but it is very dense. I struggle with it a bit more than with other similar sources (as far as concentration goes), but I take it as a good sign.

As a sort of making my learning plan more doable, I've decided to not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. So, I am rewriting significantly fewer sentences from the grammar workbook, the "scriptorium" exercise is simply too time consuming and annoying. But I keep doing everything out loud, saying the sentences repeatedly, and I rewrite some of them. The priority is to cover maximum of the ground.

I am understanding Start Trek a bit better, but I've seen only 4 episodes so far. It was a good choice. And LLwN is a wonderfully helpful tool.

This weeks challenge: move much forward in the main coursebook.
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Btw I should get a major update on my job situation next week. I'll know whether I really need to move to Germany or I'll have a job here. I'm extremely nervous.

But I got a huge update on my personal life this weekend, which sort of made me study or work at anything much less, my bf and I got engaged. :-) The last year in the covid world did take a toll on our relationship, but we are working it out and have decided to not let it destroy us, our love is stronger than that. Now I just need a stable job in a specialty worth doing, and it will be ok. We agree on the big picture, and will sort the "details" out on the go. I'm an extremely lucky woman, that such a great guy wants to spend his life with me. Few men have all the qualities of my fiancé AND are also willing to move abroad repeatedly :-D

Now I just need to inform him which country are we gonna live in during the next five years, so that he can adapt his language learning plans :-D :-D :-D
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