Lemus Log-2021-2024

[Lemus]

I hope to keep updating this log a little more regularly but we will see how that goes. If history is any indication I will be letting it lapse for a month soon enough...

I have been watching episodes of the Russian Netflix show, Better than Us. I have to say it's a notable jump in quality from most of the other non-Netflix produced Russian stuff that they have. Netflix must be quite generous with the production budgets. Anyway it's still very hard to follow but I am getting through broad plotlines fairly easily and at times there are whole conversations that I understand easily. I write down words I don't recognize and for each 50 minute episode I am capable of filling two columns of a standard notebook.

It's still very frustrating but I try to stay focused on my objective level of progress. I am unquestionably learning lots of new words but I just want the progress to be as rapid as it was for Portuguese (as if learning Portuguese after Spanish was at all comparable to going into Russian with no Slavic background).

With German I have added some podcasts from the podcast thread. Thanks to everyone who submitted suggestions over there! RadioWissen has proved to be my favorite because of the mix of content, speed of speaking, and length of episodes. When I'm feeling down about Russian it's nice to turn on a German podcast about some fairly complex topics and understand most of what's going on. It's a real confidence booster and a reminder that I will get there with Russian some day.

Also adding some German words into Anki from Rilke. I am definitely encountering some words I am unfamiliar with.

I also finished up Rilke's Das Stundenbuch (The Book of Hours). Very challenging poetry, not because of the language but the ideas. I have a bilingual edition but I wouldn't call it a parallel text since the English translators are aiming to keep the rhythm of the poem over literal meaning. They often therefore deviate pretty significantly and the English version ends up being almost a different poem on a similar theme. It's been interesting diving deeply into a parallel text like this as it really shows how challenging poetry translation is and how you can never quite reproduce the original

I am still watching a lot of Spanish content but that's not really systemic. On occasion I write words down for Anki but not often. There really aren't all that many words at this point unless I switch things up geographically. The major frustration point here is that after two seasons I still don't know Who Killed Sara. They better not drag this thing out for any more seasons after number three.

[Lemus]

I knew it had been a while since I updated this log but I had no idea it had been since May.

Perhaps I was letting it go since I did not feel there was much to report. I have not been doing much of anything systematically since then. I watch Russian audio content when I'm feeling up to it and English audio with Russian subtitles when I'm not (the latter being far more common). My vocabulary is undoubtedly improving immensely from this. There are times now in Russian original content I can grasp entire short conversations without needing to read the subtitles. Of course, there are also plenty of times even with the subtitles I have to pause to figure out what is going on, but still, there is objective progress.

The next big challenge will be to try a novel. I have two simple-looking thriller novels ready to go for this purpose but I just know that will be a huge mental challenge and my graduate courses have started up again. I don't know that I will have the right mental headspace for that until at least Christmas. Most likely I keep my steady but undramatic vocab work for a couple months still before I make the big leap. I have also been toying with some classic German literature and probably can't get through both at one time.

Unsystematically doing everything else. A German novel here, a Brazilian TV series there. It is interesting to watch that when I let Spanish or German go for a while I can pick them back up as if nothing happened but if I do the same with Italian or Portuguese there is a period I have to wake things up again. The fact that I've been doing Spanish and German much longer is clearly the root of that and shows how much firmer their foundations are in my mind.

[Lemus]

I see I let this log go another few months without an update. Again, that does not concern me greatly. I only maintain it for self-accountability reasons and my motivation has been fairly good during this intermezzo.

It's nearing the end of the year so not a bad time to start thinking long-term about what my goals will be for 2022. My semester ends in a few weeks so in many ways 2022 starts then for me in a language-sense then.

I would like to focus on German, Portuguese, and Russian in 2022 but in very different ways.

Russian is the one I want to make the most progress on. I want to finally start reading novels and finish I think ideally at least three for the year. Maybe that is not especially ambitious but I don't know how hard it will prove and I think it is best to keep my aspirations low for now. I am not setting any Anki targets for now. For sure, I did not make as much progress as I wanted in 2021 but I still improved dramatically, especially in vocabulary.

Portuguese was neglected this year, which is a shame. I would like to read at least five books and add at least 500 words into Anki along with watch a significant number of movies and shows on Netflix in 2022.

German I want to really reach for a high level this year. I have three books I want to reach which are all going to be real stretches, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and Der Zauberberg. I would also like to get through at least a couple novels and add 500 words into Anki.

Nothing particular in mind for Spanish or Italian except maintenance. Also nothing new until at least I finish my degree! Persian still calls to me at times but there is no way I could add that without cutting back severely on my other targets.

This is where I ended up in Anki for 2021 for comparison (I don't like to add new words in December since I won't really get a chance to review them before I start the new 2022 decks).

751 in Italian.
444 in Spanish
351 in German

Only in Italian did I hit my target but I am still pretty happy with how things turned out.

[Amandine]

Hi Lemus, in terms of Russian content I can recommend Dead Mountain if you haven't seen it, based on the Dyatlov Pass incident but spins out into very fictional stuff. High quality production and I found it very involving. It's on something called Topic in the US (if that's where you are). The version in Australia I could watch only had English subs available and maybe that's true of Topic, as opposed to RU subs on Netflix which is annoying from a language learning perspective but still worth watching imho.

[Lemus]

Amandine, thanks for the suggestion. Apologies for not responding for...wow over a month!

Another impressive gap between log posts! I suppose I could make a new 2022 log but given that it would probably end up containing maybe eight posts that hardly seems worth the trouble.

Temporarily freed from academic requirements dealing with both a brutal winter and yet another pandemic surge I have been able to throw myself into German with a vigor that surprised me.

I completed Also Sprach Zarathustra with less trouble than I anticipated. It was a challenging text, both in terms of language as well as philosophically but I was rarely entirely lost as to what was going on. When I looked up words I did not know, a comforting amount of them were listed as "literary" or "archaic" words. When I was confused about what was happening it seems that it was generally because Nietzsche needed an editor rather than because my German was subpar.

I finished reading it but I am not necessarily finished with it, as I find myself going back to look up the words I did not get the first time and then often re-reading sections, looking up commentaries online, and generally just trying to ruminate on it. I am happy that my German is now a tool I can use to pursue advanced philosophy and literature rather than something I need to focus on in itself. I will wait at least until the end of the month before I start on Musil or Mann.

As a break before I start something else ambition I have started the first Gereon Rath novel (Der Nasse Fisch) which I am about halfway through. It's quite good although I am coming across more unknown words than I was with Nietzsche surprisingly.

408 words into Anki already. At this rate I certainly will need to bump up my 2022 target to at least 1,000. I'll be at 500 by the time I finish Der Nasse Fisch

For the other languages, little going on. I have done some Portuguese movies and TV and am at 249 Anki cards, although I should note much of that was from the tail end of 2021 rather than 2022. Gloria, the Netflix spy thriller, was particularly good and it was also interesting to get a show in European Portuguese on Netflix, which is nearly entirely Brazilian content.

[Lemus]

There is a solid argument to be made for making a new log, namely that I titled this one "2021" but I do not really feel like making a new one so here we are.

The semester has started again so I will need to scale back on languages. I had a very productive January though. I finished another challenging German work, Sonnenfinsternis, (in English, Darkness at Noon). It had been a long time since I had read it in English and had been vaguely curious to return after I heard the original German manuscript was rediscovered after seventy years. I found it an even more rewarding book than I remember, since the main themes of the dual between humanism and political expediency is one that is evergreen.

I am really enjoying that my languages, well at least my German, are now tools by which I can engage with big topics in literature, politics, and philosophy. There is sometimes a gnawing sense (and one that I imagine I am not alone in feeling) that I am not doing something "useful" when I am working on languages. I am well aware that hobbies don't have to be measured by usefulness and I know that I have posted to that effect elsewhere on this forum but it remains something that sometimes appears in the back of my head.

From my reading and a bit of Netflix I hit an astounding 886 Anki cards so far this year in German, which is a rate I have never before reached. My retention rate is also hovering around an 80-90% most days. I wonder if I can keep that up given the number of reviews I am creating for myself in the future.

Now I will be dialing down the German and revving up the Russian. I have a graded reader with short stories that I am working through. It is slow going but with the provided vocabulary help I am following the course of action reasonably well. My hope is that finishing this reader, watching some Netflix, and working on my vocabulary will leave me in a position to tackle a real novel by this summer.

For now I am not using Anki for Russian since the word frequency of the words I am learning is still pretty high. Anki, in my view, is for "loading the dice" and forcing repetition of words that might in the course of normal reading take years to get multiple exposures to. The Russian words I need to be working on are still in the 10,000 most common so I trust I will come across them naturally pretty frequently.

[zenmonkey]

If you edit and rename your first post - your log name will change.

[Sonjaconjota]

There is sometimes a gnawing sense (and one that I imagine I am not alone in feeling) that I am not doing something "useful" when I am working on languages. I am well aware that hobbies don't have to be measured by usefulness and I know that I have posted to that effect elsewhere on this forum but it remains something that sometimes appears in the back of my head.

Yes, kind of, but think about other hobbies that people have. From dog shows to collecting stuff to taking pictures of your painted nails for instagram ...
All things considered, I would say that language learning is on the more useful end of the scale.