Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

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bolaobo
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Languages: English (N), Mandarin Chinese, German, French
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Tue Apr 05, 2022 1:34 am

I finished French Without Toil L113, Arabic L20, and Hindi L35.

Hindi was a review lesson, and I read through both the French and German versions. I preferred the German explanations and examples. The German isn't an exact translation and it covers some different concepts. It's a good translation and in some ways superior to original which seems rare for Assimil. The English version of Japanese Assimil is just a sloppy, verbatim translation of the French, for example.

I'm enjoying French Without Toil, but it's getting quite hard splitting the files with mp3split, and there is almost no silence so Audacity doesn't work well either. I still think it's worth doing though since my French listening needs improvement. L114 is the oh-so-fun "entire lesson of idiomatic expressions". I only knew a few. The further along I go in this course the more new words I'm encountering and the more I'm happy I'm choosing to go through a second course to solidify knowledge.

Arabic is still incredibly basic but I'm making progress and learning more. I'm anxious to get to more advanced material but Arabic isn't a language I can rush. Absent the occasional cognate, the vocabulary is very alien to me and hard to memorize so Anki is really coming in handy.

For some relatively easy extensive reading (at least for German), I'm reading One Thousand and One Nights with various old translations available online in expired copyright for English/German/French, including Burton's. Burton's translation is of course, controversial, but it's entertaining as heck and a good source of learning "archaic" vocabulary in English. As I've said, I want to improve my English reading skill and concentration too. French is obviously harder than German, but after I've read the story in English and German, I can get through with pretty good comprehension and not have to enter a thousand cards into Anki (although I'm tempted, reading on phone makes it too tedious)
6 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

DaveAgain
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Apr 05, 2022 4:14 am

bolaobo wrote:For some relatively easy extensive reading (at least for German), I'm reading One Thousand and One Nights with various old translations available online in expired copyright for English/German/French, including Burton's. Burton's translation is of course, controversial, but it's entertaining as heck and a good source of learning "archaic" vocabulary in English. As I've said, I want to improve my English reading skill and concentration too.
How is Mr Burton's translation controversial?
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bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Tue Apr 05, 2022 12:57 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
bolaobo wrote:For some relatively easy extensive reading (at least for German), I'm reading One Thousand and One Nights with various old translations available online in expired copyright for English/German/French, including Burton's. Burton's translation is of course, controversial, but it's entertaining as heck and a good source of learning "archaic" vocabulary in English. As I've said, I want to improve my English reading skill and concentration too.
How is Mr Burton's translation controversial?


From what I've read, like many of the translations by 19th century orientalists, it exaggerates the exotic and the erotic. But I'm obviously not able to read the original to confirm or deny this, and there is no authoritative manuscript anyway.

I enjoyed this Wikipedia excerpt on his use style of English, which I'm sure all us language lovers can appreciate.

Burton shared [John] Payne's enthusiasm for archaic and forgotten words. The style Burton achieved can be described as a sort of composite mock-Gothic, combining elements from Middle English, the Authorized Version of the Bible and Jacobean drama. Most modern readers will also find Burton's Victorian vulgarisms jarring, for example ‘regular Joe Millers’, ‘Charleys’, and ‘red cent’. Burton's translation of the Nights can certainly be recommended to anyone wishing to increase their word-power: ‘chevisance’, ‘fortalice’, ‘kemperly’, ‘cark’, ‘foison’, ‘soothfast’, ‘perlection’, ‘wittol’, ‘parergon’, ‘brewis’, ‘bles’, ‘fadaise’, ‘coelebs’, ‘vivisepulture’, and so on. ‘Whilome’ and ‘anent’ are standard in Burton's vocabulary. The range of vocabulary is wider and stranger than Payne's, lurching between the erudite and the plain earthy, so that Harun al-Rashid and Sinbad walk and talk in a linguistic Never Never Land
6 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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Posts: 237
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Location: Pennsylvania
Languages: English (N), Mandarin Chinese, German, French
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Sat Apr 09, 2022 1:20 am

I finished Arabic L21, Latin L27, and Persian L32.

I've been strangely attracted to Arabic lately, for an unknown reason, because I have no immediate motivation for it and I prefer the sound of Persian, but something is just drawing me to this exotic language! Perhaps I'm a masochist? For the amount of effort I'm putting into this language, the returns are coming slow, as expected. But I'm enjoying it.

I'm already thinking ahead. Starting at lesson 30, the Assimil book slowly does away with case endings in an effort to sound more "natural" although they're still written in the text. The old Assimil book also seems to not commit to case endings either. But, it seems the Perfectionnement book uses them again!

This presents a predicament for me, because I'd prefer to use case endings consistently since I'm learning MSA as a formal language and if I wanted informal I'd be learning a dialect.

Regardless, I will be drilling the case endings in Anki, but the audio not matching would be rather disconcerting unless I use TTS. So I have some thinking to do since I usually rely on Assimil as primary resource. I also like the pacing of the Arabic course and a lot of Arabic textbooks seem to really poorly reviewed.

My motivation has been highest for Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani lately. They now take up the lion's share of my reviews, but as anyone who glances at my log knows, my goals can change on a whim!
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 » Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:59 pm

I finished Arabic L22. Close to finishing a few others, but not there yet. :lol:

The current Latin review lesson is a little silly. It's basically the dreaded grammar-translation explanations, and I'm not going to lie that trying to fully understand it made my brain hurt since French is my 4th language to begin with. I don't know how necessary these review lessons are, but I'm going to let it sit for a bit before declaring it finished. I prefer intuitively learning grammar rather than studying declension tables. If I wanted to study Latin via the GT method, I'd be using Wheelock's. I read through the lesson and basically grasp everything, but I think I just need more Latin exposure instead of memorizing rules. That's how I've learned my other languages, but Latin is my only heavily-declined language. I don't consider German heavily declined since the endings are often unnecessary for comprehension and word order is more fixed.

As for Arabic, Assimil doing away with case endings after L29 continues to cause an existential crisis in me. I reviewed other Arabic textbooks, and they all suck. They're either not meant for self-study (no answer key, constant references to teacher), the dreaded grammar-translation method, out-of-print and unavailable, or barely readable due to font issues. The old Assimil has same issues with case endings, and they're not even fully noted in the text.

I've concluded that the new Arabic Assimil course is still my best bet. Case endings are fully noted in the text, and uses the classic Assimil way of teaching a language instead of boring grammar-translation books meant for a university setting. To solve the voice problem, I'll likely use Google Cloud TTS. I usually prefer Azure Neural TTS, but for whatever reason, it doesn't handle fully vocalized Arabic correctly. Google does.

I'm still undecided about making TTS a big portion of my study, but the Assimil Arabic voices are some of the worst anyway and I think hearing the informal version spoken while still trying to drill the endings will be too confusing.

Based on my review of various textbooks, I think the new Assimil Arabic course is better than its reputation suggests. Arabic is just a really hard language and requires more review and slower pace than other languages so you can't expect to go through it like Spanish. I have faith that finishing this course, and finishing Perfectionnement would give me a good base in MSA and hopefully instill some cultural knowledge too.

Too bad Persian and Japanese don't have advanced Assimil courses! The more I try other textbooks, the more I appreciate Assimil's methodology.
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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Posts: 237
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Tue Apr 12, 2022 11:33 pm

I finished Japanese L87. I originally told myself I'd definitely finish this book this year unless I got hit by a bus, but I'm not so sure anymore. :lol:

I dabbled in some Levantine Arabic today using A Self-Instruction Course in Conversational Eastern Arabic by the late Father Elihay. It seems like a very good textbook. People complain about the transliteration, but Arabic dialects are really never written, only spoken and it's easier to represent vowels and stress with Latin alphabet.

It's unlikely I'll keep this up, but I feel like having some background in spoken Arabic can't hurt, not to mention Lebanese diaspora are quite numerous here. I was reading about the "white language" that's becoming more and more common among Arabs which establishes a common ground between MSA and dialect speech.

Meanwhile, for MSA, I've completely ditched transliteration and use diacritics on back of cards to represent sounds exactly. It's time-consuming to input but boosts my typing skills and forces me to read the Arabic script. I'm not confident enough to rely on my listening skills exclusively so diacritics are the alternative to using the Latin alphabet.
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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Location: Pennsylvania
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Fri Apr 15, 2022 1:31 am

I finished Latin L28, French L114, and active wave of Japanese L38.

The next Latin lesson doesn't look that bad, but beginning to get annoyed by huge wall of notes in each lesson covering vocabulary. That, combined with the literal and approximate translation make the layout cumbersome at times, but overall I think it has great progression and I'm enjoying it much more than Lingua Latina.

I've changed my review plans for Arabic a bit after L29. I'll likely use the provided Assimil audio and just make-do with the declensions sometimes being left out. If it starts to annoy me I can switch, but it's something I'll have to get used to because that's how I'll likely hear people speaking MSA, and mediocre as the voice acting is, at least it's not TTS. I looked at Using Arabic and it also leaves some out (I was mistaken before since they're all written in text) and that influenced my decision.

As for Levantine Arabic, I'm thinking of using Arabic script. I've realized I can't rely exclusively on audio and I need something to look at while confirming I'm listening correctly, and while there is no official orthography, it's becoming more common to see it written on social media. I also underestimated how many cognates there are with MSA (even if vowels are different, seeing it written will help my memory) and how annoying it would be put to input characters like ḥ consistently into Anki.
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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Posts: 237
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Location: Pennsylvania
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Sun Apr 17, 2022 3:39 pm

I finished Assimil Arabic L23, Persian L33, and Speaking Eastern Arabic L1.

Arabic course is finally starting to pick up a bit. I'm excited. It's still slow-going but I'm learning new grammar, completely foreign vocabulary, and new sounds at same time so I can't rush it.

Persian course is still surprisingly slow considering it's literally L33. The fact that I'm familiar with sometimes half the vocabulary from Hindi/Urdu makes it even easier. But I've gotten quite good at typing and reading the Nastaliq. Now, I'm not saying the course is easy, but compared to Arabic, it feels that way. I'm still enjoying Persian but I've been focusing on Arabic. I figure time spent on Arabic will carry-over better to Urdu/Persian than vice versa because of huge amount of borrowed vocabulary.

Speaking Eastern Arabic seems good. It almost reminds me of an Assimil course. Each lesson has a strong focus on dialogue, and relatively minimal grammar instructions and exercises. The voice acting is good. I'm using this to help provide additional input in Arabic and tackle it from different angles. It's easier to remember a vocab word if I've encountered it in different contexts and able to form multiple links in my brain.
6 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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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Wed Apr 20, 2022 1:14 pm

I finished Persian L34 and L35 (review) and Arabic L24.

I'm still trekking along and trying to keep up all of my languages, with an obvious focus on Arabic, Persian, and Hindi/Urdu. I get enough practice with Chinese, French, German, and Japanese, and I just haven't had the motivation to focus on Latin but I do my reviews and go through lessons slowly.

The simultaneous language practice is working well for me. I peeked at the upcoming Arabic and Persian lessons and I recognize some of the words from my other languages so it feels less foreign and I will then be less likely to forget that word in any of my languages. It slows me down in the short-run but I have long-term goals to know all these languages.

Given my workload, reviewing has been a bit long lately, but since it's spread out over so many areas, I haven't felt burned out. Everyday, I do about 1 hour to 1 hour 20 minutes of flashcards, then about 10 minutes of Clozemaster and one Duolingo Spanish lesson/story. If I start to feel overwhelmed, reviews fall quickly if I just stop adding new cards for a few days. The vast majority of my cards are new/in learning stage and my settings are pretty liberal for review intervals. My review settings have worked for me and I have no plans on changing.

Sadly, my Chinese is starting to atrophy a bit. It's my best foreign language in terms of speaking, and probably still my best overall, but speaking it in the kitchen and around the house doesn't do much to keep up my literary skills, as one would expect, and I'm not as comfortable as I was a few years ago when I was reading novels everyday. I haven't had the motivation to read books or engage in Chinese media, and my Chinese flashcards are a mess, since I made them before I knew how to make proper flashcards so I don't even get good daily practice.

Often I get under 15 minutes a day of proper reading practice (real, literary Chinese) so it's not surprising I'm a bit rusty. Chinese is rather diglossic, so even if I speak it daily with my family doesn't mean I can just ignore written Chinese and expect to be comfortable.

Language learning is hard work!
7 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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Posts: 237
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Location: Pennsylvania
Languages: English (N), Mandarin Chinese, German, French
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Thu Apr 21, 2022 10:23 pm

Completed...NOTHING! Well, it's only been a day. :lol:

I took another look at the J. Elihay Palestinian Arabic book, and I continue to be impressed. I've decided to do the exercises as well instead of reading through quickly/skipping. Of course, I put (nearly) everything into Anki. If I don't put into Anki, it's not nearly as effective and I'll just forget it. There are tons of exercises in this book and it would boost my comprehensible input substantially. I skimmed through the book and there is a large amount of content that is unfortunately not voiced and not part of dialogue, but seems necessary to fully grasp the concepts. There's an answer key, hurray!

But the major problem is, there's no audio! I'm obviously not going to drill myself on reading Arabic dialects when 99% of the time it's only spoken, so I'm experimenting with Azure Neural TTS. The Syria one is the only one that gets close and doesn't seem to be based on MSA but Levantine. There is no Palestine or Lebanon option and the Jordan one seems to be based on standard Arabic and it butchers it.

For the most part, I've been able to get it to sound like I think like it should sound like, but I'm a complete newbie to this language and Syrian dialect isn't the same as Palestinian so I don't know exactly how vowels sound and it doesn't always sound exactly how I think it should sound but I think adding audio is still a net positive. I'll have a better feel for how it sounds when my level gets better.

In any case, I'm really excited about this textbook series, and also this site I found which has a really comprehensive Levantine dictionary with tons of sample sentences.
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


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