Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

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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 » Sun Jun 05, 2022 12:10 pm

I finished French L120. 19 lessons to go. The old Assimil textbooks are chock full of content. The newer ones are good too. I like the cultural notes in the newer ones, but there's an obvious decrease in the amount of content and slower progression. For some languages, like Bulgarian, Hindi and Japanese, there is no option to use the older ones since they don't exist and they use the 2nd gen/3rd gen format.

It looks I came down with some kind of cold. Well, hopefully it's just a cold. So I'll probably be taking things leisurely these next few days but still doing reviews, of course. I need to get daily reviews down anyway.
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
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:24 pm

I'm looking at both LingQ and Learning with Texts and seeing if one would be suitable for my learning style. Of course, I've heard of both of these programs before, but I've only briefly tried LingQ and never tried LWT.

I've been hesitant to use programs such as this because I"m afraid it will worsen by obsessive compulsive tendencies (all those highlighted words...) but I'm starting to think the pros would outweigh the cons for languages where I'm kind of in between extensive and intensive reading Right now, when I read, I either do look up the occasional word without marking (for content with high % comprehension), mark sentences for later SRS, or do intensive reading and add everything to Anki, but LWT/LingQ might be a good way to combine those three and have a happy medium and give me something to do that doesn't increase my daily review pile.

I'm not opposed to paying for LingQ if it were worth it, but the interface still seems kind of janky to me. For a program that costs this much, I would expect it to be easier to use. Having crowd-sourced translations is a definite plus, but not sure if it's worth being locked to a platform forever. The curated content isn't a big deal to me because with the internet, it's easy to find stuff to add.

So I'm leaning towards LWT despite the fact that manually adding every definition is tedious. Not to mention that LingQ doesn't even support Hindi (or Urdu) which is a bit ridiculous.

I'm a bit conservative with the way I learn. I'm always hesitant to add new resources to my repertoire It took me years to start putting sentences into Anki instead of just individual words, but it paid off in the long run. So I'll likely try to integrate LWT into my routine.
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
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Tue Jun 07, 2022 11:11 pm

I want to study new material, but reviews are killing me lately. I've gotten some extra sleep to get over my sickness, but that means there's no time to study! Oh well.

I'm thinking about adding a 2nd textbook for MSA focused on the written language while covering some classical constructions too. Usually, I only use one textbook per language at a time but....Arabic is special. It's not your average language since it's so disglossic and spans so much time.

Even if I somehow completely assimilate both Assimil and Advanced Assimil years from now, my vocabulary won't be high enough for real, serious material without struggling immensely, let alone having the required grammatical knowledge. And the fact that most Arab texts aren't vocalized means it's even more important to have a base of study if you want to actually know how to pronounce stuff. Arabic is one of those languages where it seems really hard to extensively read due to the writing system (similar to Chinese, I guess) until you're at a good level, and unlike a Romance language, I can't rely on thousands of cognates to lower the barrier.

I added Levantine Arabic because I want to actually understand people speaking someday, although it's not a focus for now. I should probably take the same approach to written Arabic if I want to actually understand literature someday, which is actually my main goal anyway.

Someone suggested "A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language" on here. Despite the name, it looks suitable to follow from start-to-finish like a normal textbook and it's not just a reference grammar since it includes many sample sentences and exercises. Additional input can't hurt. I like how the sentences are fully vocalized. If I start doing this, I'll focus on the exercises and example sentences and not to try to memorize every rule and verb conjugation because those Anki cards just don't work for me and they end up becoming leeches.
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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Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Wed Jun 08, 2022 3:29 pm

I finished A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language chapter 1. The writing system and orthography, which I already knew and just did a read-through. Assimil already did a good job of teaching me this aspect and I knew all the rules.

I've decided on the book. It looks perfect to me. There's an answer key, tons of exercises, and focuses on written language. I will go through this book while doing Assimil and Assimil Perfectionnement at same time since both Assimils combined seem to teach about the same vocab as this one book so it should be spread out. The exercises will give me much-needed additional input and the grammar explanations additional clarity to what I'm seeing in Assimil.

Of course, I won't do the English-Arabic translation exercises. That's just a skill I'm not interested in cultivating at the moment, but I can do the reverse since it has answer key.

The biggest negative reviews focus on print quality (I can decipher it enough to put into Anki, in which case it becomes irrelevant) and "useless" sentences. But the useless sentences seem to focus on just the kind of Arabic I want to be able to read someday so should complement Assimil's colloquial focus nicely.
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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Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Sun Jun 12, 2022 1:41 pm

I finished Arabic L31 and Bulgarian L5

My Arabic study time has significantly increased, which of course has to come at the cost of my other languages, but I'm doing enough to maintain and slightly improve thanks to Anki and 15-30 minute mini study sessions whenever I have free time. I will keep this up until my Arabic motivation decreases.

The Arabic grammar book represents my first first foray into old-fashioned "grammar-translation" for a while. I used a similar method for German (German for Reading by Sandberg) but not any languages after that. I still think such methods are ineffective for actually learning a language, but I think it can help me recognize patterns, clear up uncertainties, and be a good supplement for vocab along with a more input-focused course like Assimil.

I've been studying languages for so long but I'm still not quite sure about my learning style. For French, I studied almost no grammar but it's not working as well for Arabic and ambiguities are bothering me. Same with Latin. I'm not happy with my Latin level and I feel like I need more dedicated grammar study, especially with those damn verbs!

We'll see how this slightly different learning approach goes.
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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Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Tue Jun 14, 2022 12:39 am

I finished Haywood & Nahmad Arabic Grammar Chapter 2. The print quality definitely isn't as good as Assimil, but I'll need practice reading sub-optimal Arabic script because not everything is crystal-clear in the real-world especially with old public domain PDFs.

Each chapter has FORTY exercises, so this will take me a bit longer than an Assimil lesson if I want to fully absorb. Already, I'm finding it to be a helpful vocab supplement, because it's teaching me slightly important words such as "short", "mother", "tall" and "small" that Assimil Arabic hasn't fit into the dialogues yet :lol: . I'm sure Assimil will get to it eventually!

The best way I'm able to learn is with Krashen's so-called i+1 sentences. However, sometimes Assimil will introduce a sentence with two or three new vocab words. These will be hard to memorize and possibly become leeches unless I get exposure to those words elsewhere. Peeking at the Using Arabic advanced Assimil, the sentences are huge so any vocab I can build up in the meantime will be helpful.

I'm hoping that this grammar book introduces vocab gradually enough that most sentences are i+1 when I encounter them. Inevitably, there will be sentences with no new words, but I usually add those into Anki too because it helps cement material, improve comprehension speed, get me faster at filling in vowels, and so on.

As for French, I'm starting L121 and they're finally abandoning the storyline of the Duvals and Paul Martin. I can't say I'm too upset, I was getting a little sick of them!

I'm still enjoying French, but with all the other input I'm getting in it (not to mention Spanish and Latin indirectly boosting it), I don't need to rush it and my knowledge isn't going anywhere so I'm OK with the slow pace.
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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Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 Jun 16, 2022 2:10 pm

I finished Eastern Arabic L5 and Persian L40.

Speaking Arabic (Palestinian) is an excellent textbook, as I've already stated. I look forward to my sessions with it and I'm happy there's FOUR volumes of it! If only the exercises were recorded!

I just realized there's a French version of it (I knew author was French, I should have known), and I'm tempted to buy it because I try to avoid using English resources unless it's absolutely necessary. It's a little expensive though.

It took me a while to finish L5, but there was a lot to go through and I had to get a handle on unfamiliar consonant clusters and two new verb forms. The vocabulary itself hasn't been hard yet with quite a few words I already know. I will be giving neglected Levantine Arabic some much-needed time in the future but I'm still aiming for 2/3 of the time spent on MSA with 1/3 on dialect. They complement each other nicely.
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
Orange Belt
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Sun Jun 19, 2022 1:12 pm

I finished Spanish L12 and French L121. I'm still focusing on Arabic, but a single Arabic lesson takes me longer to fully assimilate, as one would expect, so nothing new to report.

I've stopped studying Bulgarian. It was a good Cyrillic refresher, but the language isn't a good fit right now, and it isn't easy enough to justify studying over a more spoken Slavic language. If I were to study a less commonly spoken language, it needs to be something I'm truly passionate about.

I've been doing more thinking about learning plans and maintenance. Looking at Prof. Arguelles new website, he separates his study into branches, with focus on major languages of the branches. Arabic/Persian is one, Hindi/Sanskrit is another Greek/Russian is another, Korean/Chinese characters another, and the last one is Germanic/Romance.

It is my impression that he knows a lot of languages but mainly uses the most important ones in order to reduce maintenance burden. This makes sense to me because languages within a family synergize with each other. Greek is the odd one out and doesn't really synergize with anything except Ancient Greek, which I don't believe he claims a high level in anymore.

I would separate my "branches" into the following

English/German: OK, English is barely a Germanic language, but the rest of the Germanic languages suffer from being more niche so I don't have other Germanic languages in my repertoire yet. This branch is doing well and I just need to read more and build up vocab. German is my 3rd strongest language.

French/Spanish/Latin: I'm focusing on the first two until I can make time for Latin, will likely eventually add other Romance languages. I work on improving this branch everyday and I'm making good progress.

Chinese/Japanese: Genetically unrelated languages, but there's a huge Sino component of Japanese. I don't have much interest in this branch at the moment but Chinese is my 2nd and most dominant language after English and I'm slowly learning Japanese after tackling it really hard last year until realizing I actually don't enjoy Japanese media as much as I thought!

Arabic/Persian/Urdu: Arabic is unrelated to these other two, but the huge Arabic vocabulary component and same writing system helps maintenance. This branch is very weak and is my current focus.

Hindi: No other Indic languages but I've studied this for years and the fundamentals are pretty cemented despite small vocabulary. It synergizes with Persian despite different writing system. It's unlikely I'll ever add Sanskrit, and if I were to study another in this group it would be Bengali. I struggle to find motivation to study this branch but I'm slowly going through Assimil.

Slavic: NONE, and I consider this is a pretty big gap in my skills. But opening up a new branch of languages is no small feat. I'll likely add "that" language despite distaste due to recent events since it's just too important to ignore. I have Polish and Lithuanian ancestry, but have never been in contact with that culture.

Greek: NONE. Absent personal interest, Greek will have to wait until later in my life. I have no interest in adding Ancient Greek until I'm fluently reading Latin.
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
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 Jun 25, 2022 7:26 pm

I finished Chapter 3 of Haywood and Nahmad's Arabic grammar, L32 of Assimil Arabic and Spanish L13.

Haywood/Nahmad hasn't covered new grammar yet but there's vocab I've had to put into Anki. Even for "simple" sentences I'm not reading as fast as I'd like so it's good practice regardless. Obviously Arabic will have many thousands of completely alien vocab words to learn so it's best to get started early. I'm getting a LITTLE better at remembering them but it'll be a struggle until I know more roots.

Quite honestly, I have motivation to study everything these days but I'm limited by reviews, which are crazy as usual. I try to get 15 minutes into each language / 30 minutes into each "branch" a day, with focus on Arabic where I aim for at least an hour a day, more when I can manage it. This long-term approach of gradual study has been working well for me and I plan on continuing.

I started Le Russe Sans Peine (1970s version). It's not a focus, but I'm aiming for adding a Slavic language as one of my branches and getting a little bit of time in each day which will add up over the years.

My strategy as someone interested in polyliteracy has been rather conservative. I aim for the biggest language of the branch because it's most likely to "pay off" later, absent personal interest. So I'm studying modern German before Middle High German, modern French before Old French, Russian before Czech/Polish/Lithuanian, Hindi before Bengali...as someone who's introverted and relies largely on material I can get in country or on internet, going for the low-hanging fruit makes sense.

Maybe later as I'm more advanced, I'll be able to tackle more niche languages as my goals are more concrete and I want to specialize in something.

My focus on Arabic has taken the biggest toll on my Latin, Japanese, and Hindi/Urdu. I'm basically maintaining my level with very slow improvement, but there's only 24 hours in a day and Arabic and romance languages have been my focus for now.
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
Orange Belt
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:48 pm
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 » Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:40 pm

I finished Latin L32 and Persian L41.

And then...I got sick again. The joys of having a 3-year old! I've been able to get through my daily reviews but haven't had the concentration to focus for long periods of time or do much of anything productive. My reviews were getting a bit high so this isn't the end of the world but I'm really anxious to get back into my studying routine.

Professor Arguelles' recent video about the number of languages realistic to learn sparked my interest in the subject, and I started reading The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti and its opening section with overview of notable polyglots throughout history and their accomplishments. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but it's interesting separating the myth from the reality, and trying to figure out just how competent these people were in their languages. If those people were able to do it in an age without computers, someone in this modern age with advanced SRS algorithms, endless resources, and easily accessible media should be able to go even further.
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


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