Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

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Lycopersicon
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby Lycopersicon » Wed Feb 09, 2022 7:10 pm

Edinburgh University Press published a textbook on Urdu vocabulary last year. I have not bought it so I can’t comment on the quality, but the author is a leading scholar in the field of Urdu literature.

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/bo ... ulary.html

This textbook is designed to develop intermediate and advanced students' Urdu language skills. By learning about the mechanics of word-building, you'll improve your proficiency in reading, writing and speaking. Each module is based on a register from another language and follows the same structure, with an explanatory introduction illustrated with carefully chosen examples, followed by a range of practical exercises to help you improve and test your skills.
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bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Wed Feb 09, 2022 11:17 pm

It was a busy day. I had some extra free time and used it well, but I'll probably be regretting these reviews! The fact that I'm constantly switching between languages seems to help me not get fatigued mentally and switching between target languages / French/German seems to make the connections stronger and less reliant on translating to native language.

Latin: Finished L18, pre-read L19 and added some French words I didn't know! This lesson looks a bit tough in terms of vocabulary
Japanese: Finished active wave of L34

German: Read through Perfectionnement Allemand L1-L2. It was too easy and I don't have to add any Anki cards. I got more out of reading the French than the German. L3 looks to have some unknown vocabulary. I've felt my German lacking and would like to fill in gaps with formal study.

Urdu: Continued script work. Despite its ambiguities and many rules, I think the way the Urdu script handles nasalization is superior to Devanagari and I enjoy how it's easier to spot Persian/Arabic loan words such as بچہ due to it ending in ہ

Hindi: Finished L32. I did a lot of Hindi work today and I'm getting more aggressive in adding +1 sentences I find in the wild such as BBC Hindi. I will never remember them if I don't put into Anki

Lycopersicon wrote:Edinburgh University Press published a textbook on Urdu vocabulary last year. I have not bought it so I can’t comment on the quality, but the author is a leading scholar in the field of Urdu literature.

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/bo ... ulary.html

This textbook is designed to develop intermediate and advanced students' Urdu language skills. By learning about the mechanics of word-building, you'll improve your proficiency in reading, writing and speaking. Each module is based on a register from another language and follows the same structure, with an explanatory introduction illustrated with carefully chosen examples, followed by a range of practical exercises to help you improve and test your skills.


Very cool, I'll bookmark this, thank you. Given its intermediate/advanced range, it'll probably be perfect for after I finish Assimil Hindi and do basic script work.
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby cito » Thu Feb 10, 2022 12:55 am

bolaobo wrote:Do you listen to any French podcasts? I really should start listening to more than just innerFrench...


Je sais que c'est un peu tard, mais j'aime très bien L'Heure Du Monde en Spotify. J'écoute ce podcast tous les jours et c'est toujours intéressant et se consacre sur les événements contemporains.
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50 French Books: 20 / 50
LLPSI-FA: 33 / 35
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Russian ASSIMIL: 43 / 100
(On Pause)
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Spanish ASSIMIL: 40 / 100

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Sat Feb 12, 2022 2:38 am

Today was only 45 minutes of Anki review instead of an hour. Funny how it felt short after the past few hour-long sessions! I used to even feel 30 minutes was long but I guess you get used to it. I walk around the house like a madman and get exercise at same time which also keeps me alert.

I finished Assimil Latin 19 and Japanese L84 (review). From now on, I'm only going to note completed lessons, not partially complete, otherwise I'll spend more time recording than studying! I'm jumping between books more often as I try to get more exposure to new content in all my languages daily, even if only for 10-15 minutes.

Today's Hindi lesson included the -ब- structure, which I instantly recognized from Persian. I love seeing links between languages!

I don't like setting long-term goals, because it's hard to predict, but I guess I'm aiming for a B2-C1 reading ability in 10 languages, which sounds a bit crazy but that includes my native languages and ones I know quite well already (English, Chinese, German).

Besides those, there's:

French: With all the content out there, I have no doubt I'll get there eventually. I've studied it for only a year and already got quite far.
Japanese: This will take a few years but with my boost from Chinese and personal interest I'll get there unless I lose interest. There is lots of content and media. I'm just a bit bored with it right now.
Hind/Urdu: Who knows if I'll get there? The problem is keeping interest, and the literature I want to consume is rather difficult. I'm interested in poetry, old stuff written before independence....
Latin: In a few years I think it's doable. I don't have to learn to speak it and I put very little focus on listening.
Persian: I love the sound of this language, and I love the fact that I could read literature from many hundreds of years ago. It's just a matter of steady effort and keeping interest. My focus is on reading and I don't see myself traveling to Iran. Once again, the content I'm interested in is hard.
Arabic: At my current pace, I'll never get there, of course. But I think it's too important of a language to ignore, and it is the source of borrowed vocabulary from Persian/Urdu. We'll see how other languages go and I'lll adjust pace accordingly.
Spanish: I haven't studied this for real since middle school. But I sneak in the occasional Duolingo lesson and Clozemaster round. Like Arabic, it's too big to ignore, and it's kind of "why the hell not" if I learn French and Latin. I live in the US, after all.

These languages would give me a pretty wide global range. I'm missing a Slavic language, a Dravidian language, a Turkic language, and a SEA language, among others, but I'm not interested at the moment in those areas and it's a lot of effort with little links to my current languages.

If I study 3 hours a day, in 10 years I will have studied 10,950 hours, I better get working!
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Sun Feb 13, 2022 8:06 pm

I finished Persian L22, Latin L20, Arabic L9, and Perfectionnement Allemand L3.

I'm enjoying all my languages at the moment, and I feel like I'm keeping my garden watered by giving each attention daily. :lol: I'm just slowly making progress and even if slow I can feel the improvement.

I've contemplated switching my Anki font to Nastaliq so I can get more practice with it while doing Persian review, but I barely know Naskh as is! I'm just sick of struggling with it while practicing Urdu.

Arabic is still on the back burner, but I enjoy it and wish I could dedicate more time to it. I'm also enjoying Hindi more than I thought, and I don't consider it "on pause" anymore.
8 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Tue Feb 15, 2022 10:33 pm

I finished the script section of Teach Yourself Urdu, Latin L21 and Assimil Persian L23

I wouldn't recommend this as the only resource to learn the script, but it worked for me because I already know how Hindi phonetics and Devanagari works and I just had to map sounds to different characters. Even then the author gets a bit too academic at times and even someone as obsessive as me didn't make Anki cards for all his examples. For example, he includes cases where the short vowels change sounds when written before an h, but considering short vowels are never even written, I'm not sure how important this really is to memorize the rule for.

For the time being, until I'm reading Urdu as comfortably as I read Devanagari, I'm going to be adding a card type for Hindi sentences that quizzes me on the Urdu script version as well, unless it's one where it doesn't make sense to study like some Sanskrit word. So I can quiz myself on the Urdu script, Hindi script, and audio (if available) with 3 separate card types. I've been happy with using 2 card types for audio and sentence, and I will try this out too and see if it works.

I found this site that converts between the two scripts and it's very accurate.

The card looks something like this. It looks messy, but most of it is secondary information that I only refer to if I need clarification.

Image
4 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Thu Feb 17, 2022 10:55 pm

I finished Assimil Arabic L10, Perfectionnement Allemand L4, and French Without Toil L103.

I also started the first chapter of Teach Yourself Urdu. Obviously the grammar is way too easy, but I learned Urdu greetings and get script practice. Most likely I will use this book to fill in vocab that Hindi Assimil doesn't cover but most of the grammar will be review, since Assimil covers grammar quite comprehensively.

For completion sake, I want to finish an advanced Assimil course for German before moving on to the ones for other languages (French, eventually Arabic and Spanish some years from now!). These beginning lessons are a little easy but there's the occasional expression and cultural tidbit that this book should help illuminate. If I can finish this book with near full understanding both the German and French, I'll feel quite accomplished.

So far, I've been manually splitting the Assimil mp3 files with mp3split-gtk to put the sentences into Anki, except for Latin where they already come split. Struggling with the huge German lesson revealed that this approach just wasn't going to be sustainable and wasted a lot of time. Turns out, Audacity's Analyze Silence Feature is reasonably good at doing this itself. This should save significant time in the future even if I have to fix the occasional error. I still think transcribing is a good use of my time though. It's similar to Scriptorium except I'm typing instead of handwriting.
3 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:11 pm

I finished Assimil Japanese L85, but no active wave yet. I also finished Persian L24.

I did more work on Teach Yourself Urdu. I like how the early dialogues are actually spoken at a reasonable speed. As for Duolingo, I've been doing either two Arabic lessons, or one Spanish story a day.

Anki reviews have been a bit crazy lately. Here are today's numbers.

Chinese: 5 minutes
Japanese: 19 minutes
French: 5 minutes
German: 2 minutes
Latin: 7 minutes
Hindi+Urdu: 16 minutes
Persian: 12 minutes
Arabic: 8 minutes

I study in the order listed, and by the time I get to the Persian reviews, my brain is pretty much mush and I start to feel mental fatigue and make the occasional silly mistake. But I used to feel tired just with 30 minute sessions so I think my concentration is slowly improving. I also get individual language fatigue and after about 20 minutes of Japanese reviews, I'm ready to move on.
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Wed Feb 23, 2022 12:06 pm

I finished Assimil Latin L22, Hindi L33, Teach Yourself Urdu Chapter 1, and Perfectionnement Allemand L5.

I'm still struggling more than I'd like with the Nastaliq script, so I switched all my Persian Anki cards to use it in the styling settings. I'm not worried about not being able to read Naskh since it's so ubiquitous online. I did the same thing years back when I had to get used to Kaiti Chinese font, although this switch is a bit more extreme. Nothing like jumping straight into the deep end!

While fooling around with font settings, I also switched all my German cards to use Fraktur, because that's another font I struggle reading comfortably! :lol:

Recently, my motivation has been highest for Hindi/Urdu. It's not at absolute beginner levels like Persian/Arabic/Latin, and I can feel intermediate in reach, so I've been pushing it pretty heavily and enjoying it but Urdu script cost me a lot of time that should pay off in long run.

My Japanese motivation has been rather low. I don't know why. I enjoy Japanese culture, but I guess the South Asian/Persian/Arabic world is even more exotic and interesting to me at the moment. The motivation will probably come back and that's why I maintain all my languages. I basically go through phases and I'm in it for the long haul. Last year, I nearly gave up Hindi and now I'm enjoying it again!

I've been enjoying Arabic, but it's such a hard language, and it's only a dabbling one, so progress has been slow and reviews have been hard, but I feel myself making a dent in the huge task. Someday it'll move to a primary language, likely once Persian and Hindustani are intermediate. It's the same case with Latin, but Latin is much more transparent than Arabic, obviously despite still having long way to go to reading literature. But I have faith in my long-term strategy and short daily practice so I will continue.

Given my background and hobbies, my top 5 languages will probably eventually be English (native), Chinese (use with family and most experience), German and French (tons of literature and language learning materials), and Japanese (media, Sino vocabulary base) in terms of fluency. The rest, who knows, but those 5 seem the easiest to integrate into my life at the moment with the other ones I'm studying representing relatively uncharted territory. We'll see how it turns out.
5 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Fri Feb 25, 2022 11:02 pm

I finished Assimil Arabic L11, French Without Toil L104 and L105 (review), and Japanese Active Wave L36. I really hate active wave, but I'm keeping it up for now but it's unlikely I'll go past volume 1.

I'm slowly knocking these lessons out and trying to keep a balance.

I looked into the GLOSS site again which I already knew about but I've never used seriously. It's definitely a great resource and there's an overwhelming amount of lessons for many of my languages, since I have a tendency to study languages of countries that are either hostile or ambivalent to the United States! It's also quite humbling and pulling up a random lesson gives me a good idea about where I stand with my languages.

The site has 515 Arabic MSA lessons, 297 Dari and 409 Farsi lessons, 913 Chinese Lessons, 250 Hindi lessons, 179 Urdu lessons, and even some for French/German/Japanese. It's a resource I need to use more, but it's harder to fit into my study sessions then a carefully tailored Assimil lesson which has a more gradual difficulty curve. My Arabic and Persian aren't nearly good enough to utilize even the lowest levels but my Urdu/Hindi is and the highest level Chinese lessons would be good practice. In the future, I could see myself using this the most for Persian, Arabic, and Urdu but ones like Japanese, German, and French have plenty of other fun resources.
4 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15


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