Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

[bolaobo]

Yesterday and today, I finished French Without Toil L101, Assimil Arabic L2 and L3, did the dialogue for Assimil Latin 16, and finished up Assimil Japanese L82 Passive and L33 Active (not currently doing active wave for any other Assimils). I also mined some sentences from textbook explanations (French is my 4th language, after all), Japanese Twitter, and Hindi news.

I did some thinking today about my language learning plan over the next few years. According to Prof. Arguelles, you need to spend at least 15 minutes a day maintaining each language, so for my number of languages, that should be over an hour. I spent about 1 hour and 20 minutes maintaining today so those numbers basically add up. I don't think I'm overusing Anki either. My retention rates are usually between 80 to 90 percent which means the algorithm is just right. My Latin retention rates are very high though (over 95%) which probably means I can go through the course faster or I'm putting cards in I shouldn't. That maintenance time includes Clozemaster which is rather low-intensity and almost fun.

Time management is really important. I need to set more short-term goals because even though I don't mind slow, steady progress, it would give me more motivation when I start doubting myself. I tend to be hard on myself even though I only started learning French last April and Japanese last July and I've made so much progress since then. I'm in it for the long-haul but seeing visible progress is good for motivation.

[bolaobo]

I finished Assimil Persian L17, French Without Toil L102 and Assimil Arabic L4. Slowly getting faster at typing in Arabic script, since I transcribe the dialogues and exercises to put into Anki.

French isn't my focus right now, but the old Without Toil is a good textbook that helps fill in cracks in my knowledge. I do plan on doing Using French and possibly Business French eventually but I'm in no rush. I also want to do Perfectionnement Allemand but I want my French to get better first (will my French usurp my German as #3???)

I started reading The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer. This seems like a must-read for someone with my interests and goals. In the beginning, he talks about how it is easier to learn a new language if you can map it to existing concepts/words you already know, and for this reason he also throws out the idea of learning Dutch and German at the same time as a native English speaker for the synergy. This matches what Prof. Arguelles advocates about learning related languages or a dead language and living relative at same time. I tend to agree. Latin is helping my French, and if I already know a similar word in Hindi, I remember the word much more easily in Persian. The same obviously applies for Chinese readings of Japanese Kanji.

[bolaobo]

I finished up Assimil Latin L17 and Assimil Hindi L31. Those languages were getting a bit neglected and have the fewest reviews in Anki, besides German.

I put all the exercises from Assimil Hindi into Anki, even the fill-in-the-blank ones. I didn't do this for the earliest lessons, but this course is jam-packed, ramps up in difficulty, and there's a whopping 20 exercises for each lesson. I think it's worth it unless it starts feeling too easy.

I have both the German and French versions of the Hindi course. I prefer the German version. The font is much easier to read, there are more cultural explanations, and it doesn't use transliteration in the explanations. It really is superior. But it's missing some exercises from the French version. Sometimes it only has 15 per lesson instead of 20. I assume this is because of space concerns but it's only a 538 page book, not even the longest Assimil.

Talking a bit more about Hindi, I'm interested in the language, but it's depressing how most Indian people "look down on it", there's very little modern literature or translations done into it, and it's really underrepresented on the internet for its size. Hindi Wikipedia has less than 200k articles! Nevertheless, I still feel it's the best gateway to the Indian world, other Indian languages like Bengali, and would make Sanskrit easier if I were ever so inclined.

I would love to be able to enjoy Bollywood without subtitles, but it's a lot of work to get to that listening level and I prefer reading. In terms of literature, it seems that Urdu would open up more, and I plan on working on Urdu once I get a good base in Hindi and have mastered the Perso-Arabic script. Urdu script is really hard to read and having a base in Hindi would help.

[bolaobo]

Since my last update, I completed Arabic L5 dialogue and exercises and L6 dialogue. I also completed Assimil Persian L18 dialogue and exercises.

For Latin and Japanese, I completed the dialogues for L17 and L83 respectively.

Persian and Arabic are still very easy from a grammar and vocabulary perspective, but the script slows me down as does the transcribing, which I consider good practice.

Japanese dialogue was sped up 25% and was relatively easy but I'm still encountering proper nouns I don't know and some new grammar / expressions. According to Anki, I know 1034 Kanji now, not including ones from Chinese that aren't in any Japanese deck but I can still recognize.

In short, I'm still tending my language garden. When a language starts to have too many reviews crop up, I switch languages and try to keep a balance. I'm getting a lot of French practice just from using Assimil and I listened to a few podcasts of Verbrechen while doing other things to tend to my neglected German.

[bolaobo]

It was a relatively slow day from an Assimil perspective. I finished the listening exercises for Arabic L6 and the dialog for Persian L19. I wanted to do more but I had a lot of reviews and I got sidetracked with Urdu. I also peaked at the next Hindi lesson and I don't even know all the words in French so this one is going to be a doozy.

I opened up the "Teach Yourself Complete Urdu" book and read about the script. As expected, Nastaliq is a pain in the butt to read, but beginning to get a grasp on it. I skimmed through the textbook itself but I'm not a big fan. It has a focus on dialogues and the font is really small and hard to read. I think I'd prefer finishing Hindi Assimil then tackling a reader than going through bazaar talk again although there are interesting cultural notes.

Interesting side note: Urdu uses a whole new keyboard layout completely different from Arabic/Persian, and I didn't want to learn that nor did I want to use romanization. The Pashto (Afghanistan) keyboard seems to include all the extra keys that Urdu needs and it's laid out like Persian for the most part. I found out how to type ں ڈ ٹ ڑ. I would much rather use this keyboard than have to re-learn every key, considering it's nearly identical to Persian alphabet.

I skimmed through "Hindu and Urdu Since 1800: A Common Reader". It has a fascinating introduction where it covers the influence of Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and English on Hindi and Urdu enjoy discovering relationships between languages and it makes me want to learn all of these, although Sanskrit is lowest priority since I feel there is very little carryover in terms of vocabulary while Arabic, Hindustani (to an extent) and Persian reinforce each other heavily.

[Beli Tsar]

My Latin retention rates are very high though (over 95%) which probably means I can go through the course faster or I'm putting cards in I shouldn't.

I've found Latin similarly easy to retain - most of the vocabulary is so transparent compared to other languages. I've had to use a much higher interval modifier than other languages.

[bolaobo]

My Latin retention rates are very high though (over 95%) which probably means I can go through the course faster or I'm putting cards in I shouldn't.

I've found Latin similarly easy to retain - most of the vocabulary is so transparent compared to other languages. I've had to use a much higher interval modifier than other languages.

So I'm not alone! My sentences are still rather easy and I could see myself needing more grammar practice later on but you're right the vocabulary seems very transparent. I use Auto Ease Factor add-in which is supposed to help prevent this but oh well. I would rather get too much practice than not enough.

Today, I finished Assimil Arabic L6, Latin L17, and Persian L19. I also spent a good amount of time practicing with the Urdu script. My exploration into the Arabic/Persian cultural sphere was supposed to be just be dabbling, but I have more motivation for it than Japanese at this point, which I never expected to happen. We'll see if it lasts.

[bolaobo]

I finished Assimil Arabic L7 (review) and the dialogue for L8. It hasn't been too challenging yet, and this course has a slow beginning pace like the Persian one by same author. I'm mainly getting used to sounds and practicing typing, including diacritics.

I finished the dialogue for Hindi L32. This one was a bit easier than the last two, but there's still new vocabulary. The last two lessons have had a very serious subject matter and take a pessimistic view on post-colonial India, which is a welcome change of pace from the generic tourist dialogues that pepper most Hindi courses.

I did some work on Urdu script with Teach Yourself Urdu, but I'm unsure if I'm going to continue with this textbook after learning script.

I finished the dialog for Persian L20. The course is finally starting to pick up in pace a bit. I recognized a lot of vocabulary from Hindi so this one wasn't too bad in terms of new words.

Finally, I did the exercises for Japanese L83 and plan on doing active wave tomorrow. I've still had a backlog of reviews for Japanese and I listen to Japanese podcasts everyday, so I'm still studying a lot of Japanese despite barely doing Assimil.

[bolaobo]

Today, my Anki review looked like this:

Chinese: 7 minutes
French: 2 minutes
German: 2 minutes
Japanese: 22 minutes
Arabic: 4 minutes
Latin: 2 minutes
Persian: 8 minutes
Hindi/Urdu: 8 minutes

Japanese still takes up a lion's share of my time, but I'm almost over a review hump and they will be going down soon (until I add even more cards, of course!). I would like to get more daily Latin exposure but I only have so many hours in a day and the vocabulary is more transparent than my focuses right now so requires less review.

For Japanese, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi, I do double Anki cards, meaning one for listening and one for reading, since those all use different scripts that I prefer to train separately. That increases the review time but I find it really helps balance out my skill set and the listening cards are easy to judge (I either understand it or I don't, quick pass/fail)

As for studying, I worked on Arabic L8 exercises, some Teach Yourself Urdu script work, and did Assimil Latin L18 dialogue. This lesson threw the infamous conjugation tables at me, and a lot of grammar including subjunctive, but it wasn't too hard to understand. The dialogue was silly but made me laugh out loud, and I learned the French words for squirrel and clever.

[bolaobo]

I finished Persian L20, L21 (review) and first set of 10 Hindi L32 exercises (these exercises are longer than the dialogue and there are new words in them!). I also finished Arabic L8 and did dialogue for L9.

For the first time today, my Persian reviews were longer than my Japanese reviews in Anki so I'll probably be tackling a Japanese lesson soon. I've been listening to Japanese with Noriko and Intermediate Teppei while cooking / doing housework and I can feel my listening improving a lot.

I also continued working on Teach Yourself Urdu script. Too bad there is no Assimil Urdu course! Assimil Hindi is still worth going through because it's a great course and the majority of vocabulary is shared, although the course does throw in the occasional Sanskrit borrowing despite mostly being "street Hindustani". I expect the later lessons to become more Sanskrit-heavy as vocabulary gets more specialized. If I'm still interested in filling in gaps in knowledge, Teach Yourself Urdu seems like the best option out of a selection of rather poor Urdu courses. Then I can tackle readers and real material.

I found out today the Pashto keyboard can't type ہ which is of course an important letter so the Urdu keyboard adventure continues. I guess I'll have to make a custom one which I already tried to do and kept getting an error message.