ASND's Language Log

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AllSubNoDub
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Oct 10, 2021 7:57 pm

Japanese (10/2/21-10/8/21): 4 hours 57 minutes
Spanish (10/2/21-10/8/21): 8 hours 12 minutes

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A few thoughts.

Current:

(Note: For the below, I fully understand 100% of the storyline at all times, only needing to grab the translation a handful of times because of some crazy, run on, Rowling-esque construction. I'm specifically talking about unknown words, including words I could probably guess through context but are fuzzy.)

For HP1, I kept looking up all unknowns, marking them, then inputting them into Anki at the end of the chapter. Because of repetition of vocab, writing style, etc. (and mainly rust), I went from ~95% comprehension to ~98% extremely quickly (like a few pages really). As I continued, I went to 98%-99% and instead of inputting unknowns into Anki at that point, I just powered through by just marking them and doing on-the-spot lookups. It was also extremely helpful that I was able to get into a flow state since I didn't have as much school work.

There was a small break and then I started HP2 and school kicked in. I have heard that HP2 is a lot harder than HP1, but I was really shocked that my comprehension took such a hit. I basically immediately dropped back down to between 95%-97%. Only after about a quarter of the way through the book am I just now getting to above 98% comprehension again. I can't really explain why. I think if I had stuck with it and memorized all the vocabulary from HP1 instead just on-the-spot lookups, this would have helped a lot since I know I've seen some of this vocab before. So I'm sticking with this method this time.

TL;DR: If you can read for long stretches and keep it up, you probably don't have to intentionally memorize much (or any) vocabulary or do as many lookups. If you can only grab the book in snatches here and there, then Anki is going to be your friend; a lot of time will go to Anki, but this is easier to break up. I'm going to continue doing the latter for now.

When my schedule frees up, I'll revisit extensive reading.

Future Reading:

I had talked about the GoT series, but I think I would be better served going through some easier material first.

I find these statistics extremely interesting. It seems to me I would be very well served to read through some Jane Austen, Narnia, and Twilight. I also plan to hit up quite a few series on this list; number of distinct words aren't given, unfortunately. I believe at that point, I will have more time to extensively read.

I've been looking for something like blinkist or sparknotes for Spanish. I found }getabstract. Also available in other languages. It focuses a lot on non-fiction, but there are some classics on there. I think this could boost my extensive reading success and I trust it more than a lot of the fan curated wikis. Also, probably a good way to gauge if I'll even enjoy a book.

I also haven't forgotten about DLI GLOSS. Looking at a few of the 3+ and 4 texts is always quite humbling lol. A lot of news and Wikipedia articles are an absolute breeze compared to these. I'm always shocked how easy news articles and opinion pieces that pop up into my Google feed are after slogging through novels, especially on familiar topics. Here's an interesting one for language learners. DLI GLOSS is on another level and not exactly made for light-hearted entertainment.

Future Other:

- I feel like Español en Uso was made for me lol. The description fits me well and I like a lot of Why Not Spanish?'s YT videos.

- I'm also extremely tempted by Baselang, for after I'm satisfied with my reading comprehension and vocab level.

  1. I rather like the Venezuelan accent. It's just close enough to standard LA, and other dialects that I'm interested in, to not cause issues with resource materials, but has many of the same features that I struggle with in other, more disparate dialects. It's also quite beautiful.
  2. "Activating" a language through italki can get expensive if you plan on going at it really hard! The number of lessons is unlimited and the teachers are generally of higher quality relative to the money.
  3. Since I approached Spanish in a much less structured way than German, I think I probably have gaps in some of the basic stuff. The structured content forces you to at least review these. I struggle with basic things like ordinal numbers, arithmetic, spelling out loud/saying acronyms, because I have given them zero attention.
  4. A lot of the specialization courses are right up my alley.
  5. I just found out that the DELE program is now free to the Real World subscribers. Wow. I think I'm sold.

- FSI Basic Spanish. It's just so thorough. I know this would fill in a lot of gaps and also provide the automaticity that I need. I may start memorizing just the dialogues now (as recommended in the original course), then thoroughly go through the full course later.


We shall see. I should have the time to come up with a detailed curriculum for next year during my long winter break away from school and work.
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AllSubNoDub
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Oct 17, 2021 3:09 am

Japanese (10/9/21-10/15/21): 4 hours 55 minutes
Spanish (10/9/21-10/15/21): 27 hours 3 minutes

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I've hit my stride for now. Despite my extremely busy schedule, short sessions of intensive reading and heavy amounts of Anki allow me to break up study sessions throughout the day (something I can't do with extensive input). I've started doing 40 new Anki cards per day, culled almost exclusively from intensive reading. This has allowed me to make huge, noticeable gains in reading ability, so I'm going to keep it up. So only intensive reading and Anki for now.

I believe I've hit on the perfect Anki card setup for me (still in beta testing).

Although I'm sure I'd do fine with extensive reading, it's not something I can do right now anyway, and also reading Untranslated's method makes me think I don't need to tolerate ambiguity if I don't want to (thanks to IronMike for pointing this out). I'm going to try this. I'll finish HP2, but I might move onto something more worth reading multiple times afterwards (I plan to return to the series though). Also my setup for intensively reading HP is terrible - I have to use the Castilian ebook, highlight as I go, then when I input into Anki I have to check it against my LA paper copy (I make sure the LA words go into Anki if there's a difference; I only have the LA audiobooks too). Also, my pop-up dictionary doesn't work in Adobe reader. Ugh. This is huge waste of time, I'd probably be done by now otherwise. Next time I'll try to pick my resources better.

I found a mistake in SpanishDict:
Aplana el filete con el martillo para entenercelo antes de cocinarlo. - Pound the steak with a mallet to soften it before cooking it.

This threw me down a serious rabbit hole, and it made me think I maybe shouldn't trust them. I checked today and it looks like they fixed it though, so I'll still keep using their example sentences, just more carefully.

I have given advice on this forum to others for the past couple of weeks, based on my experience. It mostly seems to have been ignored or been seen as fodder for starting heated arguments. If a post costs me a few minutes or an hour, but it saves someone weeks or months, that makes me very happy. My intention is only to help others, so they don't waste time like I have in the past. So I will refrain from giving my opinion for a while if it can in any way be seen as giving advice. That said, please do not take anything in this thread as advice (my brain probably just works differently than most people's :geek: ).
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greatSchism
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby greatSchism » Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:23 am

AllSubNoDub wrote:Spanish (10/9/21-10/15/21): 27 hours 3 minutes


That is an impressive amount of time studying Spanish. How evenly distributed is that throughout the week? It is nice when you find the time and get into a series or a book that can you binge on.

AllSubNoDub wrote: I have to use the Castilian ebook, highlight as I go, then when I input into Anki I have to check it against my LA paper copy (I make sure the LA words go into Anki if there's a difference; I only have the LA audiobooks too). Also, my pop-up dictionary doesn't work in Adobe reader. Ugh.


The Kindle app for MacBook allows you to read PDF files and use thier built-in dictionary. Have you tried readlang, LingQ or languagereactor? None of these programs are free, but they do add the convenience of being able to look up words.
AllSubNoDub wrote:I found a mistake in SpanishDict:
Aplana el filete con el martillo para entenercelo antes de cocinarlo. - Pound the steak with a mallet to soften it before cooking it.

This threw me down a serious rabbit hole, and it made me think I maybe shouldn't trust them. I checked today and it looks like they fixed it though, so I'll still keep using their example sentences, just more carefully.

Have you been finding a lot of errors in their examples?
1 x

golyplot
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Oct 17, 2021 3:38 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:I have given advice on this forum to others for the past couple of weeks, based on my experience. It mostly seems to have been ignored or been seen as fodder for starting heated arguments. If a post costs me a few minutes or an hour, but it saves someone weeks or months, that makes me very happy. My intention is only to help others, so they don't waste time like I have in the past. So I will refrain from giving my opinion for a while if it can in any way be seen as giving advice.



Regarding the advice you posted in my thread:

1) I'm not interested in using a VPN with Netflix to cheat geoblocking. I know some people do it, but I don't trust it.

2) I found the suggestion of minimal pair training interesting but never got around to actually looking into it. Thanks for the reminder though.
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AllSubNoDub
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Oct 17, 2021 5:01 pm

greatSchism wrote:
AllSubNoDub wrote:Spanish (10/9/21-10/15/21): 27 hours 3 minutes


That is an impressive amount of time studying Spanish. How evenly distributed is that throughout the week? It is nice when you find the time and get into a series or a book that can you binge on.


Yes, and the thing is I would have never noticed it if I didn't track, so I'm really glad I decided to do it this time around. It's actually fairly consistent! I get about an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, a long lunch, and I Pomodoro/Time-Box at work anyway (usually 45/15) so I've been using my Pomodoro breaks to go through flashcards. Sometimes I'll play a game where I try to get through them as fast as possible (an AJATT nugget of advice). It's actually made me more productive at work, since reading a news article or going for a stroll doesn't actually take my mind off work like it's supposed to. I also read before bed. The weekends are mostly school work, but it's lightened up a bit too (hopefully I didn't jinx it).


greatSchism wrote:
AllSubNoDub wrote: I have to use the Castilian ebook, highlight as I go, then when I input into Anki I have to check it against my LA paper copy (I make sure the LA words go into Anki if there's a difference; I only have the LA audiobooks too). Also, my pop-up dictionary doesn't work in Adobe reader. Ugh.


The Kindle app for MacBook allows you to read PDF files and use thier built-in dictionary. Have you tried readlang, LingQ or languagereactor? None of these programs are free, but they do add the convenience of being able to look up words.


Thanks, I might have to look into the PDF thing (though I'm not a Mac guy). The bigger problem is not having the LA version of the PDF/Ebook. I've thought about scanning the whole thing and converting it with OCR, but that seems like it would take forever. I love Language Reactor for Netflix/YT but I've never used their text feature, thanks so much for pointing this out!

greatSchism wrote:
AllSubNoDub wrote:I found a mistake in SpanishDict:
Aplana el filete con el martillo para entenercelo antes de cocinarlo. - Pound the steak with a mallet to soften it before cooking it.

This threw me down a serious rabbit hole, and it made me think I maybe shouldn't trust them. I checked today and it looks like they fixed it though, so I'll still keep using their example sentences, just more carefully.

Have you been finding a lot of errors in their examples?


Just this one so far out of thousands of examples. I have noticed some sloppy (aka "literary") translations, which bugs me, but I usually give them a pass on that. That's also one thing that bugs me about the Mark Davies frequency book and corresponding Anki deck (anyone who's used it will know exactly what I mean).

Also, I don't trust their translation examples at all; these are similar to Linguee, they're ok for reference, but they seem to be automatically sourced randomly from the internet (some are obviously from advertisements). I wouldn't be surprised if some are machine translations. So for collocations, idiomatic phrases, etc. (i.e. stuff that doesn't have a dedicated/curated SpanishDict entry) I usually go to the Whit Wirsing book.
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AllSubNoDub
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Oct 17, 2021 5:18 pm

golyplot wrote:
AllSubNoDub wrote:I have given advice on this forum to others for the past couple of weeks, based on my experience. It mostly seems to have been ignored or been seen as fodder for starting heated arguments. If a post costs me a few minutes or an hour, but it saves someone weeks or months, that makes me very happy. My intention is only to help others, so they don't waste time like I have in the past. So I will refrain from giving my opinion for a while if it can in any way be seen as giving advice.



Regarding the advice you posted in my thread:

1) I'm not interested in using a VPN with Netflix to cheat geoblocking. I know some people do it, but I don't trust it.

2) I found the suggestion of minimal pair training interesting but never got around to actually looking into it. Thanks for the reminder though.


Thank you golyplot! I actually wasn't referring to anyone specifically. I've learned a great deal more from you, reading your posts, than you could possibly learn from me. At least for our Japanese escapades, you're the 先輩 and I'm the 後輩.
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AllSubNoDub
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:27 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:
greatSchism wrote:
AllSubNoDub wrote:I found a mistake in SpanishDict:
Aplana el filete con el martillo para entenercelo antes de cocinarlo. - Pound the steak with a mallet to soften it before cooking it.

This threw me down a serious rabbit hole, and it made me think I maybe shouldn't trust them. I checked today and it looks like they fixed it though, so I'll still keep using their example sentences, just more carefully.

Have you been finding a lot of errors in their examples?


Just this one so far out of thousands of examples. I have noticed some sloppy (aka "literary") translations, which bugs me, but I usually give them a pass on that. That's also one thing that bugs me about the Mark Davies frequency book and corresponding Anki deck (anyone who's used it will know exactly what I mean).

Also, I don't trust their translation examples at all; these are similar to Linguee, they're ok for reference, but they seem to be automatically sourced randomly from the internet (some are obviously from advertisements). I wouldn't be surprised if some are machine translations. So for collocations, idiomatic phrases, etc. (i.e. stuff that doesn't have a dedicated/curated SpanishDict entry) I usually go to the Whit Wirsing book.


Oof, think I found another one:

a hurtadillas
"Damián vigilaba a hurtadillas los movimentos de su sospechoso vecino. - Damian was secretly watching his suspicious neighbor's moves."

I was wondering why my mouth couldn't wrap itself around "movimento". Yay for muscle memory at least.
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Tue Oct 26, 2021 5:31 pm

Japanese (10/16/21-10/22/21): 5 hours 16 minutes
Spanish (10/16/21-10/22/21): 16 hours 53 minutes

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Still chugging along. Anki and intensive reading are the two most dreaded language learning activities for a lot people, but I actually really enjoy it (along the same lines as studying grammar). My brain and body hurt at the end of the day, like I've performed an exceptionally hard and rewarding workout (which I also try to do). I go to bed with the "din" in my head, my muscles aching, and a smile on my face. Seneca would be proud.

I have noticed that my rate of coming across new words is slowing down, and I've been adding more collocations instead (which I highlight in a different color). "keep a secret", "to come to light", "by no means", stuff like that. When I pick example sentences, I always try to add sentences that are just out of reach for me, like i+1.5 sentences basically. I don't think this is recommended for languages like Chinese or Japanese, but I noticed I end up absorbing the "0.5" part eventually. Here's an example:

Vocab word: alisar (to smooth out)
Usa una plancha para alisar las arrugas de la camisa.
Use an iron to smooth out the creases on the shirt.

I have "planchar" as another vocab word, so this reinforces that, and I've also absorbed the word "arruga" through this sentence, which I recently came across in reading and recognized. In the wild, I originally came across "alisar" itself in the sense of someone smoothing out his hair. So I feel like I've built a "web" around these words, as Luca puts it.

Here's something weird. I've read the first couple of pages of each of these books in Spanish, and I'll come across maybe a couple of new words, if that:

Cómo leer un libro

Hábitos atómicos

Pensar rápido, pensar despacio

Por qué dormimos

How can I read these so easily but not get through a single page of Harry Potter without coming across several new words? :oops: Crazy. I have heard self-help books are usually easy to read, but I wouldn't exactly classify those books that way. Anyway, maybe I'll read some non-fiction after this, since it's so "easy". Also came across this book, which I bought and read a few pages of and was really quite enjoying. I had to make myself stop, but it also is similar in difficulty to those above (some Mexican? slang mixed in, but that's not big deal). It's written from the point of view of a child, but it's definitely an adult story and only 58 pages (I'm told not to preview it because it will give away the story). Funny enough, I actually have some of his "palabras difíciles" mentioned in the first paragraph in my Anki deck, which made me laugh lol.


Lastly, I'll mention that this HP sentence in particular, gave me a lot of difficulty just when I thought I was on a roll.

  • La mazmorra estaba llena de cientos de personas transparentes, de color blanco perla. La mayoría se movían sin ánimo por una sala de baile abarrotada, bailando el vals al horrible y trémulo son de las treinta sierras de una orquesta instalada sobre un escenario vestido de tela negra.
  • The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform.
A lot of the words could be guessed or were shaky, but in my Anki deck already. The thing that broke it was "son" - I had never heard of this noun which my brain (and google translate) kept trying to infer as the verb "to be". I guess it means a pleasant sound, especially in relation to music. If I were extensively reading, this whole thing would have gone over my head.
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iguanamon
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby iguanamon » Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:33 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:...Lastly, I'll mention that this HP sentence in particular, gave me a lot of difficulty just when I thought I was on a roll.
  • La mazmorra estaba llena de cientos de personas transparentes, de color blanco perla. La mayoría se movían sin ánimo por una sala de baile abarrotada, bailando el vals al horrible y trémulo son de las treinta sierras de una orquesta instalada sobre un escenario vestido de tela negra.
  • The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform.
A lot of the words could be guessed or were shaky, but in my Anki deck already. The thing that broke it was "son" - I had never heard of this noun which my brain (and google translate) kept trying to infer as the verb "to be". I guess it means a pleasant sound, especially in relation to music. If I were extensively reading, this whole thing would have gone over my head.

Yeah, whenever I think I've got anything down in a language, something else will come along to knock me down a peg too. Son (as a noun) is just a general term for a "sound" usually associated with music. In Cuba, "son" is used to denote a genre of music as well. As always, context is key. Good job.
Last edited by iguanamon on Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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german2k01
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Re: ASND's Language Log

Postby german2k01 » Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:34 pm

AllSubNoDub,

Firstly, how aggressively do you add sentences to your Anki collection from your intensive reading? Secondly, how many items in your Spanish deck do you have since you have started learning Spanish?
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