ASND's Language Log

[AllSubNoDub]

This log is intended to document my escapades, mainly with Spanish. I track my language learning through Excel spreadsheets, which I may post a public Google docs link to one day (a bit unimpressive and disorganized at the moment).

American English: Native.

German: First L2. I learned it to a high degree while making many painful mistakes that I know now not to repeat. Along the way, I picked up some pretty nifty tricks as well. At one point, there was not a whole lot I couldn't comprehend and express in the language, written or spoken. My German is in a state of disrepair at the moment, but I like to think it has "good bones". I will probably revive it some day, but not now.

Japanese: I am learning Kanji only through RTK. I am a false beginner for spoken Japanese, having gone through Pimsleur, starting the first few lessons of Assimil, and watching quite a bit of English subbed anime for whatever it's worth. I feel this is one of those languages I'll just have to let myself "get used to" and do not mind taking the slow way 'round. I also find Kanji very beautiful and satisfying to write.

LA Spanish: And that's why we're here. My history with Spanish is far too long to get into here, but these are my self-assessed levels currently, after years of disuse - Reading B2-, Writing B1, Listening A2+? (depends on dialect), Speaking A2. Suffice to say, I did not learn it in a linear fashion. Dialang currently puts me at a B2 in reading, and I feel like that's about right (I am really good at inferencing and making cognate connections with English though, so maybe I'm overestimating my ability a bit).

You can see the problem here. It's quickly becoming a written-only language for me. I have no real need for anything other than English at the moment, so in the present I'm ok with experimenting and seeing how far I can take my reading abilities then listening abilities, and finally writing and speaking down the road (all in that order of focus). I plan to cap it off with intensive dialectical studies (I can't understand Argentinos or Chileños to save my life, and peninsular Spanish grates my ears, mainly out of frustration with my abilities).

I was a member of HTLAL back in the day before I went off to college and I remember a good lot of you. Glad to be back doing my passion (I studied Electrical Engineering in college, and while it's interesting, I can think of better things to do outside of work than more work).


On the Horizon: I have some interesting ideas here, but I'm being a good boy and not spreading myself too thin.

[AllSubNoDub]

So, for the last week according to my logs:
- I spent 13 hours 17 minutes learning Spanish
- I spent 3 hours 4 minutes learning Japanese

That's actually way less Spanish than I thought, but then again, I did goof around quite a bit last weekend. I'm still working the kinks out on how and what to study. I should point out that this is almost all intensive learning (mostly intensive reading at the moment); I'll often find myself watching a video passively/extensively and not log it (but I still try). The Japanese is exclusively RTK + Anki.

I noticed that I do best when I focus on one task to completion. So if I'm reading book x, and I feel like I'm making progress, I'll ignore book y, TV show z, etc. until I'm done. Here are a couple of major things I have on the backburner that I plan on finishing:

- Spanish version of Antimoon; I'm about halfway done with the whole thing (yes, even the English dictionary reviews lol). I read it aloud.
- Dragon Ball - I've been intensively watching/listening to Dragon Ball, and probably have enough text to make my own subtitles for the Spanish dub. The problem I'm having is there aren't really a lot of shows I want to watch with matching subs. Most of the shows I want to watch (anime) have subs directly from Japanese and dubs that are more localized, censored, fit the mouthing of the characters better, etc. Most of the stuff that does have matching subs/audio are telenovelas, I'm just not that into telenovelas (at least not for intensive stuff).

What

So what am I currently doing for Spanish? Reading Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal. *gasps* "but I read that when I was A2!"
1. I'm not you. I don't know how people do that without going insane. They're not doing intensive reading if they are. I've checked multiple pages and on average I'm at 98% comprehension, which is the sweet spot (for me), which is about 3-5 unknown words per page.
2. Every unknown is going into Anki. Stuff like beaver, (two words for) hinge, vulture, pipe (tubing), crouch, flap (flutter), freckle, etc. even though I almost always understand these through context.

I'm also going through Mark Davies' frequency dictionary and scanning for unknown words, mainly from the thematic tables, e.g. swan, whale, and seagull from the "Animals" table. This is more of a chore because I have to find good sentences myself.

How

So, since there's so much I understand, I'm basically getting extensive + intensive reading. I'm doing something Barry Farber (kind of) suggested: Highlight unknown words (in PDF though) then go back later and see if you still don't know them. If I still don't know a word (or if I wouldn't be able to produce it), it goes in Anki. But some stuff takes care of itself, like "deslizarse" (which the translator kind of overuses). At the end of the week, I go back through all the highlighted words and make sentence cards.

I'm basically on the "intermediate plateau" where there are a lot of i+1 sentences. Just have to keep grinding until unknown words become difficult to find. There's also a ton that I understand because it's close to English or because of context, but I doubt I'd be able to produce, that also goes in Anki.

Till next Saturday!

[AllSubNoDub]

Japanese (8/28/21-9/3/21): 4 hours 33 minutes
Spanish (8/28/21-9/3/21): 11 hours 18 minutes

My Spanish is actually probably a bit more than that, sometimes I'll check out a page or a video and get really into it without meaning to!

I did a lot more listening (watching) this week, so I didn't quite finish HP1 or Antimoon but I'm almost done. I'm not sure what reading material to move onto next. I found the latinoamericano versions of all the other Harry Potter books, plus the dubbed movies and the audiolibros. My reading is really slow, sometimes this is intentional but usually not (it is getting faster though). I was thinking of reading through some beginners texts just to try to bring up my speed. I also think listening to the HP1 audiobook could force me to speed up.

Overall, I'm beginning to tolerate ambiguity more, which is a major hurdle to overcome in language learning in my opinion. You just have to "trust in the system" for a while. This is why I've started watching more videos and usually just let the video play unless something really grabs my ear.

Here are some things I've been watching:
- Linguriosa: It's peninsular Spanish which I've been trying to avoid for the time being, but she has an acento neutro and speaks extremely clearly. She talks a lot about linguistic curiosities in Spanish and other languages. I don't think it's necessarily targeted at learners of Spanish, the vast majority of the comments are from native Spanish speakers.

- Japonés con Rafy: He speaks really fast and has a Puerto Rican accent (I've always had trouble with this accent even living in central Florida), but he has a global audience so he tries to make it more neutral and doesn't use regionalisms. Talks about all things AJATT but for a Spanish audience.

- Koutta Idiomas: Speaker from Tamaulipas, México. Super clear Spanish, I've never had any trouble with this kind of accent nor any of the other accents from Mexico really, which are typically the clearest and slowest in the world. This guy is also AJATTing (noticing a trend? ). I typically just watch his vlogs, not really into the gameplay.

- Easy Spanish: Street interviews about various topics. I'm sure everyone here know about this channel (they have equivalents for tons of other languages as well). I'm not sure what's so "easy" about them, since they're just regular pedestrians speaking (sometimes they even put "inaudible" in the subtitles). I guess because it has subtitles? Haven't watched this one yet, but I will once I start listening more.

- Spanish Around: This is Juan's channel from Easy Spanish (above). Same basic concept.


Also found out that Star Wars Rebels (and other Star Wars shows) are available in 15 different language dubs, that's crazy!


Edit: Forgot to mention, the only one I can't really watch on 1.25 speed is Rafy lol. I only watch English videos at 1.25 speed (sometimes 1.5 speed), but I'm guessing there are dialects of Spanish where it's not really possible to do that and it still sound natural.

[AllSubNoDub]

Japanese (9/4/21-9/10/21): 5 hours 6 minutes
Spanish (9/4/21-9/10/21): 21 hours 55 minutes

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I finished HP1. I couldn't help myself and started HP2 lol. I'm approaching it differently and I think I've hit a groove for how I want to review with Anki.

Here's my current routine with HP2:

Initial Read:
- Read a chapter, highlighting unknown words (yellow) or interesting pieces of grammar, phrasal verbs, etc. (green)
- Next day, go over unknown words in the text and populate into Anki (by law it seems, a lot of the words seem to lose their appeal the next day and don't make the cut)

Anki Entry:
- Front of the card: Either the sentence from HP, or if I don't like the sentence, an example sentence from spanishdict.com, with the word(s) of interest bolded.
- Back of the card: Either the English flash (HP) or the English flash plus the full English translation (dictionary). I normally would use monolingual definitions, but in European languages going to the English equivalent doesn't seem to be much of a problem and is way more efficient.

Anki Review:
- Go through cards and give the English translation. Check answer.
- Write English answer on scratch paper (each word written only once per session). Pass/fail card normally.
- After session, go to scratch paper and translate English word list into TL. Write the word next to the English. Mark with star if unsure on translation (e.g. wait, was that an -ir verb or an -er verb?).
- Look up any words that are starred and correct the scratch paper, but there is no pass/fail consequence since I'm mainly focused on comprehension with the desire to produce eventually.

Listen to Corresponding Chapter of Audiobook:
- I will make a follow-up post to this.

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I have suspended my HP1 deck, but I plan to go back to the book itself eventually to gauge my progress. I initially tried using cloze cards, but this got difficult when I'd run into synonyms, e.g. do I need to say pestañear or parpadear? So I'd give myself hints, but this is not really optimal and overall the cards were taking too long to make.

With the new method, I can make cards in seconds. Garbage in, garbage out. Or rather, I get 90% of the bang of 20% of the proverbial buck.

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I've been looking for an accent role model. This is exceedingly hard to do in Spanish because most of the audiobook publishers seem to be obsessed with using readers with a baritone smoker's rasp. I just sound like a normal guy on the young side, and I've never smoke or drunk.
I've been listening to the No Hay Tos Podcast; Mexican speakers from Veracruz I think, some regionalisms (as the name implies) but pretty close to neutral Spanish. I may end up shadowing this.


Edited to update date range.

[AllSubNoDub]

Here's my follow-up. I just wanted to say there are actually several versions of Harry Potter. These are the latest and greatest Latino versions:

- Piedra filosofal: ISBN 9781644732076

- Cámara secreta: ISBN 9781644732083

- Prisionero de Azkaban: ISBN 9781644732090

- Cáliz de fuego: ISBN 9781644732106

- Orden del Fénix ISBN 9781644732113

- Misterio del príncipe: ISBN 9781644732120

- Reliquias de la Muerte: ISBN 9781644732137


The new Audible audiobooks also use a Latin American translation. I have a "Latino" version of HP1 from the 90's, but literally all it did was change Vosotros language to Ustedes language. The new translations are excellent. Not only are Spain regionalisms changed to Neutral Latin American equivalents, but some general improvements have also been made (en mi opinión). Here are some examples:

Old >> New

- batacazo = estruendo (nuanced differences between dialects)
- lechuzas = búhos (translation improvement)
- frigorífico = nevera (regionalism)
- nata montada = crema batida (regionalism)
- pajarita = corbatín (regionalism)
- —Sé qué día es hoy —repitió Dudley a su lado. = —Sé qué día es hoy —repitió Dudley yendo derecho hacia él. (closer to original)
- lo que de verdad echaba de menos era a sus mejores amigos = lo que de verdad extrañaba era a sus mejores amigos (clearer)
- Y mañana mismo nos iremos a comprar un apartamento en Mallorca. = Y mañana a esta misma hora estaremos comprando un apartamento en Mallorca. (closer to original)


Also, for those of you perplexed at how I can stay with HP for so long, I've never read it and barely watched the movies! It's actually pretty good!

Edited: Formatting

[AllSubNoDub]

Also, I forgot to mention in my original post. I decided to go with a premade Anki deck for the Mark Davies frequency dictionary, again, to save time on card creation. I downloaded the deck and suspended all the cards. As I go through the dictionary, I make a list of interesting words I'd like to learn and then unsuspend those in the deck. They're in the same basic format as the cards I'm inputting from the wild.

The dictionary actually has more than 5k terms, as the thematic lists usually contain less frequent words (in the 5k-10k range) as well. These usually go in Anki along with occasional words in the 3k-5k range. Hopefully, this will help me to learn the word for "road" before the word for "pavement" or something like that, analogously speaking.

[AllSubNoDub]

Japanese (9/11/21-9/17/21): 4 hours 45 minutes
Spanish (9/11/21-9/17/21): 20 hours 22 minutes

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I didn't post this Saturday. I didn't mention that I'm also in the last class/semester of my master's degree. It was supposed to be a softball class, but it's requiring a bit more work than anticipated. The last couple of semesters have probably put the nail in the coffin of me ever wanting to do a PhD though , so I should have a lot more free time after December into the foreseeable future.

It hasn't really impacted my amount of immersion so far, but it looks like I'm going to be restricted to more listening activities than reading for a while (I'm reading the equivalent of a small novel a week in English, and they're not exactly page-turners.. ). I think I still should be able to manage 2-3 chapters a week though of very intensive reading (going to take forever to finish HP2 but I should understand literally every word of it). Also will be adding new words to Anki more slowly. My listening skills need a lot of work anyway so maybe it's for the best.

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I've been using Language Reactor a lot. I've been watching a lot of dubs, which isn't optimal since subs don't 100% match, but it's still pretty helpful. Also interesting how the subs and the dubs are almost always different, usually for no discernable reason, and almost always conveying the same basic message. So you basically get two ways a native speaker might say the same thing, neat! This is my procedure:

1. If I don't understand something, I rewind.
2. If I still don't understand, I peak at the L2 subtitles.
3. If I still don't understand, I use the pop-up dictionary function and mark the words as unknown.
4. If I still don't understand, I look at the L1 subtitle as a last resort. I try not to do this, but sometimes I use it as a "check" to make sure I understood correctly since it doesn't really add any time.

I've been watching a lot of Stanger Things dub (already watched it in English). I know it's not as good as watching a native show, but it's not useless. I watched a little of La Casa de Papel and it looks really good, so I'll probably save that. I feel like I'm on solid enough footing now to where I can listen to the Castilian accent without my head exploding, but it still does trip me up sometimes. Words with "sc" consonant clusters almost always cause a pause, as well as some of the Castilian slang and vocabulary in general. I'm undecided on if I want to Anki Castilian vocab, since I don't really want a mixed active vocabulary, but I've been getting by ok so far without it.

[AllSubNoDub]

Japanese (9/18/21-9/24/21): 3 hours 24 minutes
Spanish (9/18/21-9/24/21): 18 hours 28 minutes

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Finished Stanger Things dub. I only count 30 minutes on the hour towards my Spanish time, which I feel is very conservative, since I'll rewind quite a bit depending on the material. I also found an undubbed show I like from Colombia called Siempre Bruja. Subtitle match is very good. A little corny, but entertaining. When I was in college I was doing weekly italki sessions and chose two Colombian tutors since I'd always heard Colombians had the clearest Spanish ("all radio announcers are from Colombia") and was the closest Spanish to Neutral Spanish. I later found out that there are actually 4 de facto standards (Mexican Standard, Spain Standard, Latin American Standard, and Rioplatense Standard). I also found out recently that Colombian Spanish is considered very close to standard likely because across Colombia there is a lot of dialectical variation for a relatively small country, therefore Colombians tend to use more standard LA Spanish when communicating with each other (outside of their immediate areas). In other words, Colombians are very accustomed to and good at code switching to standard LA Spanish.

From some italki sessions I had in the past, I do remember a few really common idiosyncrasies even when my tutors were using standard Spanish: Adding "¿sí o no?" to turn a statement into a question, using "listo" for "ok", adding "pues" to the end of sentences (a lot), using "chévere" for "cool", stuff like that. Both my tutors used voseo at home, but they stuck with tuteo for our lessons.

The dialects in Siempre Bruja are all over the place. Luis Fernando Hoyos plays Aldemar, he has clear, wonderfully articulated Spanish, Rolo accent or just plain LA standard I'm guessing. Indhira Serrano plays Dr. Luisa, speaks fast with lots of aspiration, but I can kind of follow since I've been around Caribbean Spanish quite a bit (she's from Barranquilla). Then it starts getting rough. Sofia Araujo plays as Alicia born in Cordoba, Argentina and raised in Cancun, Mexico, extremely hard for me to follow. Most of the other actors seem to be from Bogotá and a few from Barranquilla, and they speak very fast with quite a bit of slang (supposed to be college students).

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Gaps
It's very frustrating for me that I can read and understand nearly 100% of the subtitles, but the speaking is just crazy fast so I get lost. Nonetheless, here were a couple of non-listening related misses.

Vocabulary:
from Siempre Bruja
"esto [sic?] charlita me aburre resto"
"this chit-chat bores me a lot"
Col. Spa. RESTO: a lot

Grammar:
from Siempre Bruja
"arranque, yo le voy diciendo adónde"
"start [the car], I'll tell you where [to go]"

I've seen progressive forms of a verb not being used with "estar" before, especially with "seguir" now that I think about it, but never really thought of it as present progressive, since I honestly don't ever remember seeing that in any teaching resources. And I don't think I've ever seen "ir" + present progressive. Apparently this changes the meaning somewhat as well. I need to invest in a grammar dictionary.

I looked in FSI Spanish Basic and it's mentioned as a footnote in unit 13, but only "estar" is drilled. In the footnote, it mentions that the present progressive is alternatively used with "andar, venir, llegar, ir, seguir" with some examples. Also mentioned in Unit 48 of FSI Spanish Basic with some review drills, "Present Progressive Alternate Conjugated Verbs". I remember going through volume 1 of Basic Spanish a long time ago, but don't think I got to volume 2. It's so good, it's hard to believe it's free. I will definitely be going through this in the future.

Grammar:
Harry Potter 2
"—¿QUÉ TE TENGO DICHO —bramó el tío, rociando saliva por toda la mesa"
changed in the LA version to:
"—¿QUÉ TE HE DICHO —bramó el tío, rociando saliva por toda la mesa"

I've seen this before, but never really looked into it. It's weird enough to give me pause and I don't ever remember seeing anything mentioned like this in teaching materials, but I've seen people ask about it so it's not too uncommon. It seems to be more conversational and more Castilian. I'll look into it later.

[AllSubNoDub]

Japanese (9/25/21-10/01/21): 4 hours 05 minutes
Spanish (9/25/21-10/01/21): 4 hours 53 minutes

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Quick update. Spanish took quite a hit this week, but I managed to keep my self-promise of doing something meaningful every day. This class is killing me, firstly because I don't find the subject matter too interesting in the first place, and secondly because essentially all the assignments are group based and I have been paired up with a pedantic narcissist (and I mean someone who probably clinically qualifies as having NPD and is somewhere on the autism spectrum). It's rough. What should be fun, short, "learning exercises" become long, drawn out dissertations where my quality of work and intelligence are questioned every step of the way. I will be so glad when it is over. Last official day for class is 12/8.

Anyway, that's not what this log is about. Just wanted to summarize my thoughts on why I "failed" (not that I have a weekly goal for hours or anything right now, but I expect more) so that I can correct the situation and do better in the coming weeks. Given the circumstances, I have decided my priorities are: 1. Do Anki, 2. Keep Anki full of new cards (gathered from intensive reading), 3. Intensive reading, any amount per day, even if it's just 1 page, 4. TV series, 5. podcasts.

I acquired all of the Canción de hielo y fuego books and I think it would be great for extensive reading alongside Harry Potter intensive reading. I was really inspired by Cenwalh's log and I believe my written comprehension is probably already higher than his before he started his extensive reading experiment. I'm not quite ready to go full extensive immersion only though, but I think I can emotionally deal with locking up my dictionaries for pre-selected books then letting myself go to town on everything else. Only bummer is the audiobooks are in Castilian, but that's ok. Also, I would probably never read these books in English (too much other stuff to get to), so I don't feel like I'm ruining anything and I will probably also enjoy them regardless. The Spanish wiki page contains chapter-by-chapter summaries, which I will (intensively) read before each chapter. I originally planned to L-R them, but I was quite inspired by Cenwalh's success, so I might rethink that. Who knows when I'll get to them lol.

Japanese is very regimented, so there's no real decision fatigue there. Review the Heisig story, review the Koohii stories, decide which one is best or come up with my own, then do the Anki reps. Easy-peasy-Japanesey.

My lifetime Japanese Anki "true retention rate" is 93.7% (I'm told 80-90% is the sweet spot, so I could do more, but I'm ok with slow and steady). My Spanish retention rate is 98.2% lol. After school is over, I'll probably adjust some of the review curve settings and/or start adding way more cards. I've decided to only add cards from intensive reading at the moment and forego adding cards from other media until I have more time.

[AllSubNoDub]

P.S. Another reason I didn't do as much Spanish this week (since this log is here to keep me honest ) is because I recently discovered I have somewhat "severe" aphantasia. I don't know how to feel about this or if it's even a real disadvantage (other than not being able to follow general visualization and memorization techniques and guidelines). Anyway, I researched this quite a bit this week (at the expense of Spanish) and some people have been able to break out of this "condition" through focused training. I've also looked into some consultation services. I don't have time to do the training right now but I will try in the future. I can't help but think it affects my language learning in probably both good and bad ways.

I wonder if it's related to my brother's love of fiction, the more fantastical the better (he has hyperphantasia if anything), and my polar opposite love of non-fiction, the more dense and to-the-point the better. I tend to treat language, even my native English, like math. Maybe I'll start logging my visualization training too lol.