dEhiN's Language Log

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dEhiN
Yellow Belt
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:44 am
Location: Toronto
Languages: English (N); French (B2); Spanish / Brazilian Portuguese (A1-A2); Tamil (A1); Albanian / Tagalog / Maori (A0 - some words)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=17669
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Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby dEhiN » Fri Jan 13, 2023 4:23 am

Update time:

Sadly, I haven't been keeping up with the 365 Day Challenge. In fact, I even deleted the daily task reminder I had in my task app. I haven't completely given up, but unfortunately, my job can be very taxing. I work in IT support doing remote help desk work for a company that does IT for other companies. I found especially last year that periods when volume was high, it was all I could do to keep my review cards going for Anki. In fact, I had found sometime last year an Anki plugin that lets you postpone all cards. (You can also bring them up by using a negative number). I used it several times last year and I used it once this week!

This is all to say that despite my best intentions, it's really hard for me to juggle learning new cards or doing any major active language study and work volumes that are high. I thought things would improve this year, but so far, sadly they haven't.

I did manage to learn some new Spanish card and I also added a handful of new French cards to my deck:

la bruine drizzle, light rain
occasionner to cause (something to happen)
le gazouillis chirp/tweet (of a bird); tweet on Twitter [used in Canada]
le gazouillement the 'ing' form of the above
gazouiller the verb form of the above

I learned these words from a weather announcement in French, so I felt safe adding the last 3 to my deck. The only other change is that about 6 Portuguese cards move from review status to new status. Although I haven't done it yet, I decided to do the same for Portuguese that I did for Spanish with the numbers 1-100 plus the hundreds and one thousand and one million. That is, I'm going to create cards for them and learn them. I already had about 4 or so, which were review but I moved to new. My plan is to us Spanish for the flip side of the Portuguese number cards to hopefully help me keep the two languages separate in my head.

Updated: 23:00 2023-01-12

español (Spanish)
Restructured Active: 289 (was: 276)
Restructured New: 365 (was: 377)
Restructured Subtotal: 654 (was: 653)
To Refactor: 139 (was: 140)

français (French)
Restructured New: 278 (was: 273)
Restructured Subtotal: 935 (was: 930)
Total: 1450 (was: 1445)

português (Portuguese)
Restructured Active: 220 (was: 226)
Restructured New: 88 (was: 82)
To Refactor: 251 (was: 252)
Total: 559 (was: 560)
5 x
Anki
fr : 658 / 1473
es : 199 / 799
ta : 59 / 649
pt : 118 / 556
mi : 10 / 22
tl : 5 / 37
sq : 12 / 73

Study resources
¡Adelante! Uno : 11 / 218

ISO 639-1 Language Codes

User avatar
dEhiN
Yellow Belt
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:44 am
Location: Toronto
Languages: English (N); French (B2); Spanish / Brazilian Portuguese (A1-A2); Tamil (A1); Albanian / Tagalog / Maori (A0 - some words)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=17669
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Contact:

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby dEhiN » Fri Jan 13, 2023 4:55 am

I made some changes to my signature. Mainly, I decided to use the ISO 639-1 language codes and I've grouped my 7 languages into core and secondary. Core are basically the ones I've never fully given up on, although I have stopped at times, resulting in the beginner levels in Spanish, Portuguese and Tamil. :( The secondary ones are for fun and I'll just keep going until it's no longer fun. Meaning, I'm not putting pressure on myself with ideas of what level do I want to take the language to, do I want to be fluent, etc.
2 x
Anki
fr : 658 / 1473
es : 199 / 799
ta : 59 / 649
pt : 118 / 556
mi : 10 / 22
tl : 5 / 37
sq : 12 / 73

Study resources
¡Adelante! Uno : 11 / 218

ISO 639-1 Language Codes

User avatar
księżycowy
Blue Belt
Posts: 655
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2017 3:26 pm
Location: Earth
Languages: *Native*
English

*Studying*
Biblical Greek, Hebrew, German (Arabic)


*Waiting List*
Irish, Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Modern Greek, Latin, Old English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese), Vietnamese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Aramaic, Amharic, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Cayuga
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17499
x 1488

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby księżycowy » Fri Jan 13, 2023 5:19 am

Perhaps you could take the 365 challenge as a way of pushing yourself when the work situation gets a bit better. Sure the over all idea is to study every day a year, but for people like us that either don't have the best study ethic, or have things that interfere with our best intentions, I don't think we need to stress about doing it everyday. Just try to do as best as we can, and try (within reason) to do more than we normally would. Or something like that.

Honestly, I probably could have studied yesterday (it's currently 5am Friday where I am), but because of my health stuff and meds I'm currently on I didn't. I guess my point is, there's no reason to quit the challenge (not that I'm saying you are quiting, and you can if you truly want to of course), in my mind it's about just trying to do better than I have last year. Interruptions come for many of us, and not everyone gets a "perfect score".

So what if you (that's a general "you" there) don't get to 365? I know I won't. I'm shooting for 300, so I've got a few "pass days". And I'm not going to stress if I don't take it to 300, I'm just going to try my best to motivate myself to keep going. I usually end up quiting the contest after a month or two, but I don't want to keep having these start and stops.

Actually I feel very similar to you (dEhiN) in that's probably why some of my languages are still in the A0-A1 range (like Polish and Irish, and even German). And I want to try to find a way to break out of this cycle. Surely there must be a way, and personally I feel like it's got to be a bit of a push. Finding a balance between language study and other important things in our lives (be they work, study, other hobbies, etc).

I don't know, just some random thoughts in the wee hours of the morning. :)
4 x
Dead Log
Modern European Log
East Asian Log

DaF Kompakt A1-B1 (Klett) : 1 / 30
Modern German Pronunciation 2e (Hall) : 0 / 7
[Greek and Hebrew TBD]

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Querneus
Blue Belt
Posts: 836
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 5:28 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Languages: Speaks: Spanish (N), English
Studying: Latin, French, Mandarin
x 2269

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby Querneus » Fri Jan 13, 2023 8:06 am

dEhiN wrote:For French, I always figured that de with a proper noun (i.e., name) that starts with a vowel became d' unless the definite article is also added. For example:

Je viens d'Abbottsville

But, as I was reinstalling Adobe Acrobat with my computer set to French, I saw this:

Screenshot 2023-01-12 172831.png

Perhaps there's some rule I haven't learned yet, but to my (intermediate-level) French brain, de Acrobat both looks and sounds wrong. Is this a case of Adobe having an incorrect translation or have I been wrong and de followed by a name starting with a vowel doesn't change to d'?

I asked a guy from Paris who likes linguistics, and he replied:
It's A Thing where people sometimes treat proper names as not allowing liaison/elision; I even catch myself doing it. It's condemned by prescriptivist but it's common in practice.
5 x

User avatar
Querneus
Blue Belt
Posts: 836
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 5:28 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Languages: Speaks: Spanish (N), English
Studying: Latin, French, Mandarin
x 2269

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby Querneus » Fri Jan 13, 2023 8:45 am

And now just added, too:
It's possibly reinforced by softwares not bothering to have rules for when to ellide "de" into "d'", so they have a pre-written phrase "installation de [blank] en cours", and then fill the blank with whatever.
3 x

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dEhiN
Yellow Belt
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:44 am
Location: Toronto
Languages: English (N); French (B2); Spanish / Brazilian Portuguese (A1-A2); Tamil (A1); Albanian / Tagalog / Maori (A0 - some words)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=17669
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Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby dEhiN » Sun Jan 22, 2023 7:26 am

księżycowy wrote:Perhaps you could take the 365 challenge as a way of pushing yourself when the work situation gets a bit better.
...
I don't know, just some random thoughts in the wee hours of the morning. :)

I meant to reply to this but then forgot. Thanks for your thoughts księżycowy. They make a lot of sense, and it's true, I don't have to stress about doing it every day. In fact, it's really just the perfectionist in me that was thinking that way.

Truth be told, finding a balance particularly between work and any other area of my life is a challenge for me. But, at least I'm still going through Anki including adding new cards and learning new cards. Several times in the recent past, I've had the desire to add some sort of written practice. For certain languages, like Tamil or Albanian, I've thought about practicing things like verb conjugations and simple sentences. For Tamil, it would be a way to practice my Tamil writing, but also a way to practice slightly more complex sentences such as those involving 2 or more clauses. For other languages, like French and probably Spanish, I could practice journalling about my day or certain events.

Unfortunately, none of these times that I've had the thoughts become a reality. Hopefully one day soon.
2 x
Anki
fr : 658 / 1473
es : 199 / 799
ta : 59 / 649
pt : 118 / 556
mi : 10 / 22
tl : 5 / 37
sq : 12 / 73

Study resources
¡Adelante! Uno : 11 / 218

ISO 639-1 Language Codes

User avatar
księżycowy
Blue Belt
Posts: 655
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2017 3:26 pm
Location: Earth
Languages: *Native*
English

*Studying*
Biblical Greek, Hebrew, German (Arabic)


*Waiting List*
Irish, Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Modern Greek, Latin, Old English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese), Vietnamese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Aramaic, Amharic, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Cayuga
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17499
x 1488

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby księżycowy » Sun Jan 22, 2023 8:07 am

You'll get there. Just start small and build up. Start one of the writing practices for one of the languages, for example.

With papers being due at my university presently, I've unfortunately lost the last week+, but I've vowed not to give up on the 365.
1 x
Dead Log
Modern European Log
East Asian Log

DaF Kompakt A1-B1 (Klett) : 1 / 30
Modern German Pronunciation 2e (Hall) : 0 / 7
[Greek and Hebrew TBD]

User avatar
dEhiN
Yellow Belt
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:44 am
Location: Toronto
Languages: English (N); French (B2); Spanish / Brazilian Portuguese (A1-A2); Tamil (A1); Albanian / Tagalog / Maori (A0 - some words)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=17669
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Contact:

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby dEhiN » Sun Jan 22, 2023 8:11 am

Update time:

I took a break from the Spanish numbers after getting up to 90 and shifted my focus to some Tamil. Specifically, I had several cards for Tamil verb and noun suffixes. Tamil is an agglutinative language (which I may have shared on here before) and generally is considered to have 8 or 9 cases:

  • Nominative
  • Genitive
  • Dative
  • Accusative
  • Locative
  • Ablative
  • Instrumental
  • Sociative
  • (Vocative)

The last one isn't always considered a case from what I've seen, though it does have a specific case suffix just like the others. The ablative is sometimes analysed as a suffix plus postposition since it's the locative with a form of the copula attached. There are 2 locative and ablative suffixes, one for animate objects and one for inanimate objects. I haven't studied fully into all the differences, particularly for things like abstract ideas, etc. From what I can tell, the sociative is essentially used like the instrumental (conveying the idea of "with") but for animate objects. For example, I went to the store with my friend would use the sociative suffix on friend while I cut the chicken with the knife would use the instrumental suffix on knife.

Tamil verb conjugation is also heavily suffixed, with specific PNG (person-number-gender) suffixes being attached to the end of a verb to conjugate for I, we, she, they, etc. Tamil has, like French, a second non-polite singular and then a second polite singular that's also the second plural. In this case, the second polite singular and second plural pronoun form(s) and PNG suffix are the same.

Tamil also has, for third person, an animate-inanimate distinction in singular and plural, a polite-non-polite distinction in singular, and a masculine-feminine distinction in non-polite singular. Confused? Basically, it means there would be a separate pronoun and PNG suffix for each of the following:

  1. He is my younger brother. [masculine, animate, non-polite, singular]
  2. She is my younger sister. [feminine, animate, non-polite, singular]
  3. He is my teacher. [(masculine) animate, polite, singular]
  4. She is my boss. [(feminine) animate, polite, singular]
  5. This is my bike. [inanimate, singular]
  6. They are my cousins. [animate, plural]
  7. These are my books. [inanimate, plural]

I wrote the animate, polite, singular with a possible gender distinction because learning resources are confusing on this. Most learning resources I've seen will only specify one animate-polite-singular pronoun/PNG suffix, but will write that it's the masculine-animate-polite-singular, implying there is no equivalent for feminine. I have seen one or two resources that have specified a separate masculine and feminine form for animate-polite-singular. I've also seen some resources use the (masculine) form but only specify it's the animate-polite-singular. Personally, I've used it in the latter sense, considering there to be a gender distinction in animate-non-polite-singular but none to exist in animate-polite-singular.

Finally, Tamil verbs have a tense suffix that's more like an infix as it's sandwiched in between the verb root and the PNG suffix. There are 7 verb classes in Tamil and each class has their own past-present-future tense suffix paradigm. It's a little confusing though because many of the classes will share the same specific tense paradigm, such as verb classes 1-5 having one present suffix and 6-7 having another.
5 x
Anki
fr : 658 / 1473
es : 199 / 799
ta : 59 / 649
pt : 118 / 556
mi : 10 / 22
tl : 5 / 37
sq : 12 / 73

Study resources
¡Adelante! Uno : 11 / 218

ISO 639-1 Language Codes

User avatar
dEhiN
Yellow Belt
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:44 am
Location: Toronto
Languages: English (N); French (B2); Spanish / Brazilian Portuguese (A1-A2); Tamil (A1); Albanian / Tagalog / Maori (A0 - some words)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=17669
x 253
Contact:

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby dEhiN » Sun Jan 22, 2023 8:12 am

Update time continued:

Anyway, here's my updated Anki deck stats. For my signature, I decided to put the totals as the language totals, instead of the restructured card totals for that language. By this, I mean instead of saying I've studied 291 out of 651 Spanish cards, I'm now saying I've studied 291 out of 790 cards. Also, for the languages that have a reduced total, it's because I decided to archive a few cards that I felt I didn't need to keep studying anymore and I didn't want taking up space in my active cards.

Updated: 02:26 2023-01-22

español (Spanish)
Restructured Active: 291 (was: 289)
Restructured New: 360 (was: 365)
Restructured Subtotal: 651 (was: 654)
Total: 790 (was: 793)

français (French)
Restructured Active: 658 (was: 657)
Restructured New: 277 (was: 278)
To Refactor: 514 (was: 515)
Total: 1449 (was: 1450)

português (Portuguese)
Restructured Active: 221 (was: 220)
Restructured New: 86 (was: 88)
Restructured Subtotal: 307 (was: 308)
To Refactor: 251 (was: 252)
Total: 558 (was: 559)

Shqip (Albanian)
Restructured New: 54 (was: 46)
Restructured Subtotal: 66 (was: 58)
To Refactor: 7 (was: 14)

தமிழ் (Tamil)
Restructured Active: 145 (was: 136)
Restructured New: 50 (was: 59)
4 x
Anki
fr : 658 / 1473
es : 199 / 799
ta : 59 / 649
pt : 118 / 556
mi : 10 / 22
tl : 5 / 37
sq : 12 / 73

Study resources
¡Adelante! Uno : 11 / 218

ISO 639-1 Language Codes

User avatar
dEhiN
Yellow Belt
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:44 am
Location: Toronto
Languages: English (N); French (B2); Spanish / Brazilian Portuguese (A1-A2); Tamil (A1); Albanian / Tagalog / Maori (A0 - some words)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=17669
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Contact:

Re: dEhiN's Language Log

Postby dEhiN » Wed May 10, 2023 5:10 am

TL;DR:
- kept up with Anki reviews
- stopped using just English for the "fluent" language for the review cards
- interviewed for a job where I can use both French and Spanish
- as part of the interview process, did a language assessment for both
- started using French for my inner monologue
- made efforts to converse more with my partner in a mix of English and French
- started going through a Spanish textbook


After being away from this forum for several months, I'm going to try and return to more active posting and updating. Actually, over the past few months, I haven't done that much by way of language learning. I've kept up with Anki, but only recently did I start doing cards in new status. Yet, despite it basically being review for Anki, I have made some changes.

I've made more efforts these past few months to improve my French. I started thinking more in French and even though my job is English-based, with most of the tools we use for remote support also being in English and no ability to change that, I still try and use French for my internal monologue. This has led to a mixed English-French use with my girlfriend. I'm happy about it though because it's a consistent mix: in the past, I defaulted to English and only with effort would try and say some things in French; now, for some responses or thoughts, the French comes to me first.

I also recently had an interview for a new job and as part of the interview process, I had a language assessment for both French and Spanish! The job is similar to what I do now - service desk / help desk tech, but specifically for a software company. The role would be responding to clients of the software who need help, and the company has clients across Canada, the US, and Puerto Rico. Knowing French and/or Spanish wasn't a requirement of the position - they already have at least one fully French-English bilingual service desk tech - because I shared about my language skills, after the second interview with the service desk manager, they asked me to have a language assessment. I had to chat with someone from the company who is fully bilingual in French-English and then switch to someone who is fully bilingual in Spanish-English. While I think I did quite well conversing in French, my Spanish skills were atrocious! As it is, my Spanish is at an A2 level at best (perhaps even down to an A1 level now), but in addition, I kept thinking in French!

Getting back to Anki, and in the line of trying to improve and use my French more, I've been slowly changing the "fluent" language on cards for Spanish, Portuguese, Tamil, and Tagalog to French. I've been doing this as cards come up for review. As part of the process, I didn't reset any card progress, but I would first change the "fluent" language (or meaning of the term) to French, then I would mark the card again which mostly would show in 10 minutes and then 1 hour, and then I would schedule the next review for 1-30 days in the future, depending on how easily I thought I could remember the French meaning. For example, for the Portuguese card uma batata, after changing the meaning from potato to une pomme de terre, I scheduled the next review for 30 days. However, for most of the cards, I would schedule for the next one to 5 days.

I haven't bothered to look at my stats as they would be all skewed, but so far, doing things this way, I've been able to change about 51% of my Spanish review cards, 46% of my Portuguese cards, 31% of my Tamil cards, and 46% of my Tagalog cards. For my Maori review cards, I changed 2 out of the 19 to French. For the 12 Albanian review cards, when I first learned them, I had changed the fluent language to Spanish, and I also did the same for one of the Maori cards. For the rest of the review cards, including almost all of the French cards, I've used English as my fluent language. I say almost all because for 4 of my French cards, I used French for the fluent language to explain the term meaning, and for 2 of the French cards, I used Tamil for my fluent language.

Lastly, I started going through a Spanish textbook! This past weekend, my gf and I finally cleared off the clutter from our desk because I felt like starting some active study with one of the several texts I have for my languages. At first, I wanted to finally start Practice Makes Perfect: French Verb Tenses (Premium, 3rd Edition) which we had bought copies for a while back for each of us. But, she wanted to go through it with me as well and even though I know that could mean we either never start, or we start but barely progress, I decided to look at Spanish. While I have a few resources, including two Teach Yourself books, most are in storage. The two texts I have with me are Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar (Premium, 3rd Edition) and ¡Adelante! Uno: An Invitation to Spanish (2nd Edition). That last one is actually what's used at a local college where I'm a part-time student and where I took my spoken French course last summer. While I haven't yet taken one of their Spanish courses, I've considered it and even done a placement assessment. The particular text that I have I actually bought second-hand from someone who took the course.

I decided to use the college text. Because the book is used and because I'm not actually taking the course at the college, I can't use the online website accompaniment component, which means I can't do any listening exercises, and some of the workbook exercises are filled in already. But, my plan is to just read through the book, gleaning whatever I can. So far, I've gone through the first 11 pages and I think I have like 27 more for just chapter one! Yet, even in those 11, I learned 4 new words that I added to Anki.
5 x
Anki
fr : 658 / 1473
es : 199 / 799
ta : 59 / 649
pt : 118 / 556
mi : 10 / 22
tl : 5 / 37
sq : 12 / 73

Study resources
¡Adelante! Uno : 11 / 218

ISO 639-1 Language Codes


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