2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:45 am

09.03.2021

  • [de] Read a little of Ein Gutes Omen (learnt a new phrase: wie dem auch sei).
  • [ar] Anki reviews.
  • [ko] Going through a dialogue in the Living Language book, Assimil style.
  • [ko] Anki reviews - I was a lot better at writing the words today, yay!
  • [de] Another post on r/WriteStreakGerman - 'Wovor hast du Angst?', where I wrote (verrrrrry) briefly about the Uncanny Valley effect.
  • [zh] Read more of 好兆头 on Readlang.
  • [zh] Anki reviews/added more words from the reading.

It's a shame Readlang is never going to be updated, to be honest, because the core of it is so good. I'm writing vocabulary out by hand as I look it up, though, because a) that's better practice for me; b) I want to put them all in Anki; and c) Readlang does seem to use Google Translate for the in-text stuff, but they use a good dictionary in the sidebar thing, so it's better to write those meanings down than rely on what's above the text.

Tomorrow's focus is German - I've got all these corrected texts now, so have to figure out what I want to do with them. I think I'm going to move Spanish to Thursday (when I'd usually have no focus language) so that I can do a full day of Arabic on Saturday and really push through to the next unit. We'll see how that goes, though! ;)
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu Mar 11, 2021 9:49 am

10.03.2021

  • [de] Anki reviews.
  • [de] Grammar study - revisiting prepositions! Just went through the ones that take the accusative case yesterday; there are some I've never been able to keep track of, so this is necessary work. And I feel like it all makes sense now... about 17 years after I first started learning German :lol:
  • [de] I've now got a 10-day streak on r/WriteStreakGerman. Yesterday, I wrote about using the method from the Assimil books to tackle the dialogues from my Korean textbook.
  • [zh] Reading - some more of 好兆头. It looks like most of the words I'm looking up are HSK 5/6 level (many have no HSK level, according to the dictionary) - with a couple at level 4. I feel pretty good about that! It seems like most of the 1-3 level vocab is still in my brain somewhere, which isn't tons but obviously it's generally pretty high frequency.

Spanish day today. I've done like nothing in Spanish all month, so am hoping to get through one lesson in my textbook and maybe watch something. I'm sticking with reading in Mandarin until I've finished this chapter - which hopefully will be today, too.
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu Mar 11, 2021 11:47 pm

11.03.2021

Kind of done with everything earlier again today!

  • [es] Living Language - did lesson 13. They actually only take about 30 mins to do (probably if I went a bit slower, say 45 mins, then I'd get 100% on the end of unit tests, but I'm doing okay :lol:) because at this stage, I'm still refreshing things I generally know. Covered more slightly irregular verbs and the difference between saber/conocer in this one.
  • [es] Anki reviews and added the words/sentences from the unit I'd just done. I've still got some missing ones in between but I'll catch up at some stage.
  • [de] Wrote again for r/WriteStreakGerman. It was a little harder to think of something today, so I ended up writing about Good Omens, since I'm kind of reading it in German and Mandarin and I know the book so well. I have a collection of topic ideas from this forum already, but I might go hunt for inspiration this weekend, especially as I come across more grammar structures I want to practise.
  • [zh] Reading - finished the first part of 好兆头! It's been four days, so a bit over two hours, to read ~1000 characters. I'm definitely at a low-ish comprehension rate (est. 120 unknown words/phrases, so approx. 240-300 unknown characters, meaning ~66% comprehension going in, though I'd think closer to 50% considering some of those I looked up cropped up more than once) but I know this book incredibly well, so I'm looking forward to reading more. Still, will switch to German/Spanish reading again for the next little bit.

Arabic's going to be my focus language for the next couple of days, though I'm hoping to get through all of them a bit on Saturday. That's about the last day of the 6WC as well, I think, so it'd be nice to bump up my ranking a bit! :lol:
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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon Mar 15, 2021 10:16 am

12.03.2021

  • [ar] - Anki reviews.
  • [ar] - DLI lesson 2 - went through the dialogue again and the questions.
  • [de] - Another piece for r/WriteStreakGerman about choice paralysis and Netflix.
  • [de] - Reading; started reading Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) - I've been reading Frankenstein in Baghdad in English but I've never read the original Frankenstein so I thought this would be fun to start reading alongside it. So far, so good.

13.03.2021
  • [ar] - Sound and Script L3.
  • [ar] - ArabicPod101; multiple choice quizzes.
  • [ar] - Anki reviews.
  • [de] - More writing for r/WriteStreakGerman (about my inability to drive :lol:)
  • [de] - Reading more Frankenstein.
  • [es] - Reading; Los juegos del hambre.

14.03.2021
  • [ar] - Anki reviews.
  • [es] - Anki reviews.
  • [gd] - Anki reviews.
  • [zh] - Anki reviews.
  • [de] - Watched the first episode of Mord unter Mormonen on Netflix. It was okay; I don't know if I wasn't that interested in it or if I was put off by the dubbing they tend to do for documentaries (VO vs. full dubbing). I guess it's more distracting because I find it hard to tune out the English.
  • [de] - Writing - I'm at almost 3k words for the month so far.
  • [de] - Reading; went back to reading a little more of Ein Gutes Omen.

So my plan for Arabic this weekend was to get a lot of stuff in there - and I was feeling good about this on Friday! I re-read the DLI L2 dialogue and I understood it all; I could answer the questions, things were going great...

Then I did Sound and Script L3 and it was like I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't hear the hamza on basically anything; same with ث vs ذ - I'm honestly not sure I know the difference. The only bit I did okay on was the diphthongs and I still messed up the final quiz because I'd chosen a different (more confusing) way to write out the answers lol.

I think maybe I was just having a bad day - I got a lot of corrections on my German text the next day, some of which I really should have known better about, but either way, I took a bit of a rest yesterday re: formal study. Today's focus language is Scottish Gaelic so that'll ease me back in, I hope.

I did race to the finish line for my 6WC stats last night, finally finishing 15th... out of 20 :lol: but the 10 hours of Arabic I did is better than I usually manage for a 6WC!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby cjareck » Mon Mar 15, 2021 6:56 pm

LunaMoonsilver wrote:Then I did Sound and Script L3, and it was like I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't hear the hamza on basically anything; same with ث vs ذ - I'm honestly not sure I know the difference. The only bit I did okay on was the diphthongs and I still messed up the final quiz because I'd chosen a different (more confusing) way to write out the answers lol.

As far as I remember, that one was not difficult for me, but others were worse. It may be the result that I'm not a native English speaker, and my brain is trained to distinguish different sounds. Nevertheless, I would suggest making a special Anki note for differentiating sound - fields for words with corresponding sounds. It should generate the following:
- you see word 1 and word 2 and hear a sound -> determine which one is it (two such cards - one for sound 1 and one for sound 2)
- you see word 1 and 2 and hear sound 1 and 2 for comparison
I did something similar for Arabic (and Mandarin), and after many repetitions, it finally helped me master the sounds.

(edit)
You may also find the following video useful:
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Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue Mar 16, 2021 2:19 pm

cjareck wrote:As far as I remember, that one was not difficult for me, but others were worse. It may be the result that I'm not a native English speaker, and my brain is trained to distinguish different sounds. Nevertheless, I would suggest making a special Anki note for differentiating sound - fields for words with corresponding sounds. It should generate the following:
- you see word 1 and word 2 and hear a sound -> determine which one is it (two such cards - one for sound 1 and one for sound 2)
- you see word 1 and 2 and hear sound 1 and 2 for comparison
I did something similar for Arabic (and Mandarin), and after many repetitions, it finally helped me master the sounds.

(edit)
You may also find the following video useful:


Ooh, that's a really good idea - and a great video - so thank you! I think I went looking for a kind of minimal pairs Arabic Anki deck but couldn't find anything I liked but, duh, I have all that S&S audio I'm actually having issues with lol so I'll get onto that. I think the hamza was the one that really annoyed me because glottal stops are something I recognise from my own accent - so sometimes I heard them and knew it was there, but there was minimal explanation for how to recognise it at the start of words etc. However, some reading around should clear that right up!

------

Woke up this morning with a migraine which may also go some way to explaining how confused I felt by everything on Saturday (less noticeable Sunday by the fact it was Mothers' Day, I think, so I was naturally doing other stuff). Have jumped back onto work this afternoon because I have things I need to get done today but it's going to be minimal screens this evening to try and rest my poor lil eyes/brain - gonna dig out some real dead tree books for my reading I think. Will be back updating (and making more Anki cards :lol:) tomorrow!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby Elsa Maria » Tue Mar 16, 2021 7:55 pm

I finished #13 in the 6WC. I might have done a wee bit better had I not had so much fun with the Women in Language conference last weekend. But I agree that it was a great conference, and it was absolutely worth the time spent on it! I still have some talks to catch up on.
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:03 am

Elsa Maria wrote:I finished #13 in the 6WC. I might have done a wee bit better had I not had so much fun with the Women in Language conference last weekend. But I agree that it was a great conference, and it was absolutely worth the time spent on it! I still have some talks to catch up on.


Oh, nice! And I'd like to say same but even though I spent like the entirety of the four days just obsessed with WiL, I wasn't doing great at keeping up my Arabic hours regardless :lol: Which talks did you find the most useful? I missed the panels, weirdly, I was busy each time one was on - so they're what I plan to catch up on in the next month or so.

-------

15.03.2021

  • [de] Kept up my writing streak; wrote about exercise for a lack of any other topics.
  • [ar] Anki reviews.
  • [de] Reading; more of Ein Gutes Omen. I'm over 60% of the way through now.

16.03.2021

  • [de] Like I put in my log yesterday, a migraine hit me in the early hours, though thanks to medication I was up and about by midday-ish. I worked through the afternoon with everything on its dimmest settings and then switched most things off for the evening. Still, I didn't want to break my writing streak (and I was feeling okay), so I wrote a little piece about dinosaurs by hand and then typed it up on my phone. For reference, it took me as long to do this (and the piece was about half the length of what I've been doing) as it normally does to write a new piece, check it, reply to comments on the old ones and re-write the old ones with their corrections. :lol:
  • [ar] Anki reviews (couple of mins).
  • [de] Read some more of Ein Gutes Omen.

17.03.2021
  • [de] Started listening to the audiobook of Die Farben der Magie. I read this book wayyy earlier in the SC but I want to see how many Discworld books I can get through between now and Dec - with a combination of listening and reading. Counted a minimal amount of time as I was listening while working, but I think I kept the gist of the plot pretty well.
  • [de] Wrote about a YouTube video I watched yesterday about polygamy among Maasai people living in a traditional village. It was really interesting - and I ended up looking at polygamy in general, the severe lack of polyandry in the world and the concept of 'walking marriages' among the Mosuo people in China.
  • [ar] Anki reviews.
  • [de] Anki reviews.
  • [es] Anki reviews.
  • [es] Reading - some more of Los juegos del hambre. I re-watched the film a few days ago (in English), which has helped me a little bit with the reading, as I do have a tendency to get lost. I forgot how much I enjoyed it, tbh (and I've grown from my teen self; I now much prefer soft boi Peeta, he's so great!).
  • [de] Reading - some more of Ein Gutes Omen.

Feeling a lot better today, but still a little ~foggy~, which should wear off over the next couple of days, I think. Until then, my focus is going to be primarily German because trying to remember new things is going to be entirely futile.
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:49 pm

LunaMoonsilver wrote:Started listening to the audiobook of Die Farben der Magie. I read this book wayyy earlier in the SC but I want to see how many Discworld books I can get through between now and Dec - with a combination of listening and reading. Counted a minimal amount of time as I was listening while working, but I think I kept the gist of the plot pretty well.


Wow. I can't imagine reading an author like Terry Pratchett in a target language. I've only read him in Swedish, and only the first four in the series. (Eventually I got to know the translator of those.) This was 30 years ago, so I might be able to pull it off in English now. But not in German. Impressive and inspiring.
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby Elsa Maria » Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:19 pm

My two favorite talks so far were (1) the Latin one and (2) the one about 30 translated books.

I am tempted to quit Latin every other day, and her talk gave me so much enthusiasm for the language and some really interesting resources.

Nearly every book from the translated fiction talk went on my Goodreads TBR list, and I have subscribed to her podcast.

Do you have any talks to recommend? I still have quite a few that remain unwatched. The FB group turned out to be a lot of fun :)
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