On and Off - RU, FA, (A)EL, etc... etc...

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Zerrez
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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby Zerrez » Wed Jun 19, 2024 12:23 pm

Yeah, sound good. If you have an idea about how to organize it I'm all ears. Otherwise we can do something through Whatsapp or Telegram... whatever :)
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cito
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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby cito » Tue Sep 24, 2024 1:22 pm

Welp... it's been a while.

We can start with Personal Updates: I got my first salaried job! I'm working in College Admissions. It took a decent number of job applications to even get an interview, but luckily, I think due to my good grades (and my humble charisma :lol:) and a good interview I got the job! It's been a ton of work, and I have less time for languages, but I need money! Luckily my parents are fine with me staying at home for the time being since I am working and saving money.

I also have a little nephew now (not sure if I said this already), and he's the cutest! Definitely makes me excited to be a father. Hmm what else....
Oh. The scholarship I am applying to in Uzbekistan has been progressing well. I had an interview recently for it, and my interviewers (two of whom I knew well [one was my French professor from Uni, which was a pleasant surprise], and the other only in passing) said my application and accompanying essays were polished. I think I have a real shot at getting it, and I think it would be a lot of fun / a great experience.

The only unfortunate news I have is that I have been in a terrible reading slump. I just can't always get myself to read lol.

Now time for languages, which I have been in a bit of a slump with, but nothing too bad.

French:
Not many updates, as I'm not really 'learning' French anymore. I just try to watch some videos here and there, and listen to L'Heure du Monde. My French abilities are definitely a bit rusty, so I wanna increase what I'm doing for it, especially while at work on my break. I really want to read Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal. I have read the first 120 pages or so, and really enjoyed it, but that was about a year or two ago, and I didn't finish it since I was busy reading Madame Bovary for class, which I should probably give a reread sometime soon.

Latin:
Unfortunately, due to my scholarship application process and my summer travels, Latin has completely fallen by the wayside. I know it's not hard to revitalize it, due to the fact my knowledge of Latin is very much tied up with LLPSI, but I should probably give it an hour a week or so just to not waste all the time I spent studying. Yeah yeah sunk cost fallacy whatever, but I have no desire to forget my Latin, but also not much of a desire to improve it either.

Modern Greek:
Since I got home from Greece I haven't done much. One day I will get it back up and running, for sure. I made a lot of great friends in Greece and will definitely be going back when I can, but for now I'm not terribly motivated to study it. One day I'll finish the Language Transfer course and then move on to ASSIMIL-- one day.

Italian:
It's deceptive to put it here, but I traveled to Rome and an island near Naples where my family comes from after Greece and picked up a little Italian. Using French and Spanish I was able to get through basic conversations. It's a pretty language and maybe one day I'll become fluent, but I'm equally interested in learning Neapolitan one day. I got a few Neapolitan and Italian books, which I'll post about later.

Spanish:
No updates. It's just sitting there.

Old English:
Same as above, although when Osweald Bera comes out, I might give it another swing. It's such a lovely language, and I'd love to support Collin Gorrie. He's a great educator and teacher! More information here: https://ancientlanguage.com/osweald-bera/

Now time for the languages I'm currently "studying."

Russian:
Russian is without a doubt my favorite language to study right now. I've been interested in it for a while and have studied on and off for a few years (anyone who has read this log knows lol), but recently it's been super rewarding and feels similar to the excitement I felt for French in 2021 (although I'm not studying 4 hours+ daily like I did for French during the 2021 Super Challenge in August).

It's beautiful and fun to learn, although I've found memorizing verbs to be hard, as they have many consonant clusters and suffixes / affixes that feel the same for me. It's also much harder than Latin when it comes to memorizing Imperfective-Perfective verb stems, but I'm sure I'll figure it all out.

I'm proud to say I'm on lesson 67 of ASSIMIL Le russe, which is actually the farthest I have gotten in an ASSIMIL book (the first half is sometimes the best). I've slowed down recently to a pace of around 2 lessons a week, but that's just been recently with having started work and needing time to relax after! I'm still getting used to the new schedule, which including my commute is around a 10 hour work day.

I have been paying for Pimsleur too (mostly for the next language), but haven't been using it a ton. That's okay though, and I think once I finish the 1st ASSIMIL book I'll try to work through all of it, since it will be helpful for speaking. After the 1st one, I'm planning on going through the second one (Perfectionnement).

I've also been listening to Max's podcast and have paid for the transcripts, which are very helpful, and which I put into LingQ, as well as the ASSIMIL lessons. I might make a Youtube video about how I study Russian and maximize my use of ASSIMIL, just for fun. As for the podcasts: I want to get into a routine of spending a week listening to a specific one at least once per day while going through it on LingQ. Seems like it could be a great strat, but also it could be a little too much to bite off and chew.

Might get a tutor eventually, as I have a job now and can afford it.

Speaking of Youtube, I've been watching some easy videos in Russian. They're fun! I don't watch a ton of them, though.

I'm terribly excited to get better at Russian, though, as Soviet films and Soviet / 19th Century Russian Lit are some of the coolest things humans have made! One day!

Uzbek:
My first Turkic language, other than Turkish, which I studied for like 3 weeks in 2023, is Uzbek! Yay! I know it's a meme online, but from what I have seen, it's pretty unique as far as Turkic languages go, especially due to it's heavily Persianate / Tajik vocabulary and lack of vowel harmony.

Only issue is that I haven't really studied much. I got a textbook for it from Georgetown University Press and have just got to find the time to study it. I'm also thinking about looking for a tutor, since it's so weak in learning resources.

Persian (Farsi, Tajik):
Not saving the best for last, but Persian has been a language I have been thinking about more than spending time learning, but that's okay. I am studying it because there is a decent minority of Tajik's in Uzbekistan, and I'd like to research the evolution of National/Personal Identity in Uzbekistan since Independence while there. It's a very regular language, and it has grown on me, certainly.

It's definitely a language I'll need a tutor for, just because of, again, an egregious lack of resources given how many people speak it (mainly thinking about the lack of easy podcasts and videos-- I'm spoiled by French and Russian).

I've mostly studied the Tehran Farsi dialect, as that's what the Routledge Colloquial Persian is based on, however despite the book's many great qualities, I find it to become a little too complicated a little too fast. I've begun actually (re)learning the script (I took Arabic in high school) by going through the ASSIMIL manual. I'm on lesson 12, and like many people on the forum am disappointed by the audio, as it is so slow I find it hard to even follow each sentence being read. It's like... wwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy tttttttooooooooo ssssssslllllllloooooooowwwwww. Now wasn't that a little hard to read? Yeah, imagine that but it's all the audio for the book! Yeouch!

Similar to Russian, I've been putting all the dialogues, new vocabulary, and recently example sentences given in the grammatical notes (which I put into my vocabulary deck for Russian, but all in the same one for Persian) into Anki. It's great for review.

Anyway-
Hope everyone has been well. Cheers!
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ASSIMIL Le Russe: 80 / 100
ASSIMIL Le Persan: 14 / 85

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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby guyome » Wed Sep 25, 2024 8:11 am

cito wrote:I'm on lesson 12, and like many people on the forum am disappointed by the audio, as it is so slow I find it hard to even follow each sentence being read. It's like... wwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy tttttttooooooooo ssssssslllllllloooooooowwwwww.
That's an accurate impression :lol: At least, I'm sure I'll never forget maaaaard ââââââb dâââââd and the likes of it!
I don't know why assimil does it (especially for Persian, which is not exactly the most difficult language to pronounce). I guess they want the student to be very aware of the pronunciation of each sound but like you I find this rather hard to follow. I don't mind slow audio in the beginning but there is some kind of threshold, where too slow becomes counterproductive.
On the bright side, it does get better around lesson 25 (but still quite slow though).

Congrats on your job, and good luck with Uzbek and the scholarship! I dabbled in Uzbek in 2021 and liked it a lot.
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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby cito » Wed Sep 25, 2024 12:47 pm

guyome wrote:
cito wrote:I'm on lesson 12, and like many people on the forum am disappointed by the audio, as it is so slow I find it hard to even follow each sentence being read. It's like... wwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy tttttttooooooooo ssssssslllllllloooooooowwwwww.
That's an accurate impression :lol: At least, I'm sure I'll never forget maaaaard ââââââb dâââââd and the likes of it!
I don't know why assimil does it (especially for Persian, which is not exactly the most difficult language to pronounce). I guess they want the student to be very aware of the pronunciation of each sound but like you I find this rather hard to follow. I don't mind slow audio in the beginning but there is some kind of threshold, where too slow becomes counterproductive.
On the bright side, it does get better around lesson 25 (but still quite slow though).

Congrats on your job, and good luck with Uzbek and the scholarship! I dabbled in Uzbek in 2021 and liked it a lot.

That's a relief that it gets faster. I did see on Bolaobo's log that he was still using Audacity to speed them up by up to 50% by the end-- I think I'm too impatient to do that, frankly, since I make Anki cards from the ASSIMIL audio. I've been trying to optimize my workflow lately, as time spent on administrative tasks while language learning isn't extremely conducive to language learning itself. It's also important, however, to not over-optimize and obsessively try to find the best, most efficient way to learn rather than learn itself.

(Queue B-Footage of me spending an afternoon while in Greece trying to get chat GPT to write me code to automate the creation of an Anki deck :lol: )

Also, thanks for the link! I've aways enjoyed reading your log since I first found it, but it will be fun to go back and read that part. Did you ever experiment with/learn Chagatai? From what I've seen its supposedly very close to Uyghur and Uzbek (as well as those being quite similar as well) and has a lot of great stuff in it. I'd personally love to learn it if it's similar to Uzbek, and ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī supposedly wrote that Chagatai was a superior language for poetics than Persian, the main poetic language of Central Asia at the time :lol: . Seems like the Chaucer of Central Asia!
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ASSIMIL Le Russe: 80 / 100
ASSIMIL Le Persan: 14 / 85

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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby guyome » Wed Sep 25, 2024 2:05 pm

cito wrote:Did you ever experiment with/learn Chagatai?
Indeed I did! Twice, actually :oops: You can read about it here, here, and here. I used Eric Schluessel's Introduction, which (although not without faults) does a good job and is freely available here.
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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby cito » Wed Sep 25, 2024 2:37 pm

guyome wrote:
cito wrote:Did you ever experiment with/learn Chagatai?
Indeed I did! Twice, actually :oops: You can read about it here, here, and here. I used Eric Schluessel's Introduction, which (although not without faults) does a good job and is freely available here.


Awesome! Thanks so much! I'm curious though too if you ever wrote about your experience learning Manchu? It's such a cool language to learn.
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Re: Cito's Randomly Dispersed Updates

Postby guyome » Wed Sep 25, 2024 3:40 pm

cito wrote:I'm curious though too if you ever wrote about your experience learning Manchu?
Not really since most of the basic learning process took place in the early 2010s, long before I joined this forum. This post in my log touches upon the topic but only in very broad terms.
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Re: On and Off - RU, FA, (A)EL, etc... etc...

Postby cito » Fri Nov 01, 2024 1:52 pm

Just accidentally deleted my whole post I had written, effectively wasting half an hour of my morning.

Perhaps that was a lesson in humility :lol: .

Basically most of my languages were in hibernation in October. Russian has remained fine and I'd like to finish the last 30 lessons of the ASSIMIL book by Jan 1. Persian has completely hibernated and will need significant defrosting, but I think I'll finish the ASSIMIL book by February. Uzbek has seen no progress. For the 3 aforementioned languages, I intend on getting an iTalki tutor soon as well.

French is just fine, though I'd like to read a book soon; been listening to podcasts or watching Youtube videos here or there. Latin has nearly completely atrophied, so a reread of LLPSI is in order. In Spanish I recently bought a Murakami book (De que hablo quando hablo de escribir) and I watched a video or two.

Greek has mostly been of the Ancient variety lately. Feeling not like myself a bit so I figure I'll study the New Testament and Hellenistic Greek again (lol) (I prefer the term Hellenistic to Koine). I've been using Logos: Lingua Graeca per se Illustrata and Biblingo. Also Mark Jeong's A Greek Reader, which is fantastic. I'm enjoying it a lot and can't wait to progress in the language.

I was looking into Hebrew and I really enjoyed the Aleph with Beth videos on Youtube, but I think I'll hold off for now, since Osweald Bera is about to go on sale! What's that you ask?
https://ancientlanguage.com/osweald-bera/
It's essentially a beginner level graded reader for Old English, a language which I love, but whose dearth of genuinely good resources makes it difficult to study in the way one can study Latin or Greek. Pre-orders of the book begin later today and I'll be surely one of the first to order it. I seriously can't wait and I've been excited about this for about 5 months since I heard about it. I'll probably refresh myself with the Teach Yourself Old English book and/or Peter S. Baker's Introduction to Old English.

Anyway, that's that. My travel season for work is finally done, so I can't wait to have a relaxing weekend for the first time in a month or so.

Best of luck to everybody.
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Re: On and Off - RU, FA, (A)EL, etc... etc...

Postby księżycowy » Fri Nov 01, 2024 5:16 pm

cito wrote: Also Mark Jeong's A Greek Reader, which is fantastic. I'm enjoying it a lot and can't wait to progress in the language.

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the reader. I have a copy, but haven't really bothered with it, since Kutz has a workbook that goes through Luke. Anyway, I was curious how the reader was.
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Re: On and Off - RU, TJ, UZ, etc... etc...

Postby cito » Wed Jan 01, 2025 8:46 pm

Happy New Year!

I figure I'll do a quick write up with what I've been up to since my last few posts. I've been working a lot but got the last few days as vacation. I feel decently well rested, but I'm been facing some non-serious physical and mental health roadblocks. I am determined to get back to my energetic and passionate self, but I know I'll just have to face the next few months and get back into my languages. I've decided given my current status (waiting to hear back from a Fellowship in Central Asia) I will buckle down and focus on what I need to do in service of my language learning interests. I'm focusing this year on Russian, Uzbek, and Tajik (as a dialect of Persian).

I'm determined to stay on top of my health this year taking baby steps to get my body out of the current neglected, injured state it is in and feel better about myself as well.

I'll go into more depth now:

French will not be a main focus this year, but I certainly would like to remain somewhat active with it, more as an aspect of my daily life and personality than a focus. I want to read a few books this year in French and listen to podcasts/watch Youtube videos for at the very least 1-2 hours a week, if not more. While my level doesn't inhibit me from watching videos only in French, it is rather a dearth of information about the specific topics I watch videos about in French compared to English. So yeah: goal is to maintain my French and read in it.

Russian has been the most fun as of late. It is challenging but satisfying, and my knowledge of Latin, grammar, and linguistics is certainly serving me well with understanding how the language focuses. It is becoming more comfortable for me, and it is exhilarating feeling once again how I felt when I first really tackled French and reached the late beginner/early intermediate phase of the language (definitely still upper beginner in Russian. My goal this year is to make a big leap in my level. If I get the Fellowship I am applying for, I should be going to a Russian intensive summer program I have been saving up for from June-August, and then be in Central Asia for 9 months. If I don't get it... I'll reconsider my options :lol:.

My studies for RU will be focused on the ASSIMIL series, whose first volume I thought I would finish by now. I am also looking into another book for grammatical exercises and I am currently using a LingoMastery e-book for 'vocab' mining. Really I just study each story at a time and collect vocab from them. Then I read and re-read the stories, I listen to them and read them at the same time, and I relisten to them without the text. There are 20 all in all, and I have even another book of similar stories (and audio) to work with once I'm done with that. I want to learn about 10-15 words from the stories each day, and hopefully I'll make some strides in my vocabulary in doing so. If I finish those I'll start doing the same with books like The Stranger or Harry Potter, as I always do. I can't wait! I also may do some Pimsleur, but I have trouble being consistent with it.

Uzbek is exciting, since I'll have my first lesson tonight! The teacher I found on Italki also does Russian, so if we click maybe I'll study with him in Russian as well. Uzbek is an interesting language, but it certainly lacks the resources that Tajik and Kazakh (of all Turkic languages) have. I personally am quite surprised that Kazakh has as many resources as it does, given that Russian is quite dominant in Kazakhstan, and that many more people speak Uzbek than Kazakh. While yes it is a 'meme' in Language Learning communities, I am very excited to learn it because of the beautiful culture associated with it. All languages have that, but Uzbekistan has particularly inspired me, as do Tajikistan and Afghanistan (where it is spoken by minority Uzbek groups). There is also the art of Baxshi, which is the practice of reciting Epic Poetry over music similar to the familiar work of the Old English Sċop or Athenian Rhapsode, yet still existing in a continuous practice. I digress.

For Uzbek I will be using Azimova's Uzbek: An Elementary Textbook, along with taking lessons. I have found an 'AI' TTS engine that sounds really good and in asking chatGPT some very specific requests I got it to create this:
Men yangi tillarni o‘rganishni eng yaxshi mashg‘ulot deb bilaman. O‘rganish jarayoni kitoblar va darsliklardan boshlanadi. Kitoblarimni do‘stlarimga tavsiya qildim. O‘quv markazida, men o‘rganishni o‘zlashtira olmadim, lekin internet orqali o‘rganib olmoqchi bo‘ldim.

Hozir men yangi so‘zlarni yozib olaman va ularni takrorlayman. Ertaga qo‘shimcha darslar olishni boshlayman. O‘rganish qiyin bo‘lishi mumkin, lekin sabr qilish kerak. Ba’zan, kitobni topa olmayman, lekin do‘stim men uchun kitobni topib berdi. U kitoblarni yaxshi tanlaydi, shuning uchun uni tavsiyalariga amal qilaman.

O‘rganish qiziqarli. Mening do‘stim tilni o‘rganishni mendan ko‘ra yaxshiroq biladi. Kim yaxshi o‘rganadi, deb o‘ylasangiz, bu doim o‘zgaradi!

---

English Translation
I consider learning new languages to be the best hobby. The process of learning starts with books and textbooks. I recommended my books to my friends. At the language center, I could not succeed, but I decided to learn through the internet.

Now, I write down new words and review them. Tomorrow, I will start taking extra lessons. Learning can be difficult, but it is necessary to be patient. Sometimes, I cannot find the book, but my friend found it for me. They choose books well, so I follow their advice.

Learning is fun. My friend knows how to learn the language better than I do. If you ask, who learns better, it always changes!


and record audio of it. So cool!

While yes, this paragraph is somewhat awkward, it uses a ton of different tenses and things which will be helpful for studying, especially since there aren't really a ton of "beginner's podcasts" or "comprehensible input" videos in Uzbek. I gave the computer quite specific directions :lol:. It makes Turkish tempting, since they are quite similar, and the latter has such better resources, but since it won't be the only language I'm essentially starting from scratch in, I'll let it be the only Turkic language I study now.

Tajik is the next language, and I'll be taking lessons for it as well, since like Uzbek it suffers from a lack of resources. The area I am applying to has a lot of both Uzbek and Tajik speakers, so I would like to learn them both. My first lesson with Sherkhon (iTalki tutor) is on the 4th. I'll be sure to brush up on my Persian again before I start.

I think I'll ask him (if he knows Persian) to translate/transform the Persian dialogues in ASSIMIL from the Farsi dialect to the Tajik dialect. That way I'll have an almost 'bilingual' or 'diglossic' tool to work through to understand the language better in its various dialects. Since I am interested deeply in both Tajik and Farsi, I would like to learn both.

Other languages:

Yes, all other languages I have studied before will be placed in this category for the next few months. Of them I will likely use Spanish the most, since I have become closer lately with a Puerto Rican Uncle of mine. He and I were always close, but he's had tough times lately and I'd like to be there to support him. He really appreciates it when I speak Spanish with him, so I'll be sure to put in some practice therein... maybe I'll use Duolingo :lol:. I still have some books I should try and get through and learn vocabulary from, but I'm not sure I'll have time for that.

Old English was a desire of mine, but I need to focus on my career now, so when I can I'll study bits and pieces of Osweald Bera, though it makes me sad I have to take a pause and refocus :cry:. This is the same for Latin, which I made quite decent progress in, but I have since neglected. I'll just keep rereading LLPSI in chunks to maintain it, and maybe write some journal entries here and there. While I love studying Ancient and Modern Greek, they too will likely not be developed any more, even though I had so much fun with them last year. Same goes for the Akkadian and Hebrew.

I have come to the conclusion that Language Learning can't be the most important thing in my life, and that I will likely not be able to learn all the languages I would like to. That's okay with me :) . It's certainly my passion and my favorite hobby, but I can't let it consume or mess with my actual career, academic, and creative aspirations.

I might try to make a few more videos, however, and put them on my Youtube channel. I don't think Youtube needs another 'language learner' channel or 'polyglot,' but I would like to make casual videos about books, the experience of learning languages, literature, etc. We'll see.

So here's to Russian, Tajik, and Uzbek!
5 x
<><
ASSIMIL Le Russe: 80 / 100
ASSIMIL Le Persan: 14 / 85


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