Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

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bolaobo
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Location: Pennsylvania
Languages: English (N), Mandarin Chinese, German, French
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Wed May 18, 2022 6:52 pm

I sat down and actually read Chinese. Turns out, I can still read it. Instead of trying to read Journey to the West or something in traditional characters, I picked up a normal modern novel written in simplified characters and had no problems.

I can technically read traditional characters, but not as comfortably because I have much less practice.

Sometimes I'm unsure of how a character is supposed to be read or the tone, but once you have a large vocabulary and know chengyu, it's a lot easier to infer based on context.

Speaking of Journey to the West, the language really isn't that hard. It's all the cultural references, religious references, and endless footnotes that often just confuse me further. To top it all off, it really isn't that interesting and gets repetitive quickly.

I have a feeling I will run into this same cultural hurdle when my Japanese, Arabic, Hindustani and Persian get more advanced.
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
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 May 21, 2022 1:37 pm

I finished Persian L38. It was a relatively easy lesson, and the next two lessons look fun. I'm still enjoying Persian even though I'm in an Arabic phase.

My "deload week" is over. I knocked 15-20 minutes off my daily review time, so it was definitely worth it.

I'm trying to utilize more downtime getting extensive reading in for French, and German. Much better time spent than opening Twitter! French, German, and Chinese are a high enough level that almost anything is worthwhile. This will get me practice in those languages without adding into Anki and increasing my review load.

I can consume content in Hindi and Japanese too, but only stuff made for learners and childrens' content, otherwise it's too inefficient with comprehension rates that require intensive reading. But I get time in when I can with easy content.

As for Persian, Arabic, Latin, and Spanish, those languages require dedicated study to get anywhere. I try to get 15-30 minutes in a day.

I'm still studying Levantine Arabic, but MSA is my priority so Levantine Arabic tends to get very little time. But I'm doing enough to make progress through my textbook.

I peeked at the next Arabic lesson, and there are almost no cognates. The lesson itself isn't especially hard, but the vocabulary will take a while to sink in. Anki is perfect for such exotic vocabulary, even when it sometimes feels excessive for transparent languages like Spanish. This is why I started learning Arabic at age 31 instead of 40!
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 » Tue May 24, 2022 5:03 pm

I finished the active wave of Japanese L39 (this might be the last one) and Arabic L29.

I'm anxious to study, but review times the next day are holding back my pace. I should probably be reading more in the languages I know well, but....I want to study! I'm trying to do Arabic practice that doesn't lead to a bunch of Anki reviews, but it's hard at my level. To be sure, I am reading some German and French, but I was never a huge reader growing up and it's a habit I'm trying to form.

For fun, I'm slowly dissecting the original Arabic version of One Thousand One and Nights (Calcutta edition). It's way above my level, obviously, but with a dictionary I can find some X+1 phrases (not even full sentences yet!) and gradually improve knowledge. Language that I slowly dissect with help of a dictionary and then add to Anki is generally easy to retain since I spent so much time just figuring it out. I don't think it's efficient but it's a different kind of study that doesn't lead to a pile of reviews the next day.

Japanese reviews are getting annoying. I know the card, I know the character and its meaning, but I make a minor mistake in pronunciation in one character of the sentence and have to fail the entire card. In the long-run I'll either memorize it or fail it enough times that the card gets marked as a leech, so I don't think it's a huge issue, but it's frustrating in the short-term. It's still good practice because my goal is to read naturally and effortlessly without half-assing it and being unsure of how it's pronounced. Maybe that's more acceptable for literary characters, but not the stuff I'm drilling! My goal is to have an internal voice so I can read something in Japanese and simultaneously cement the readings instead of getting "close enough". I'm not tolerant of ambiguity which is probably why I spend so much time studying.
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 » Wed May 25, 2022 10:14 pm

I finished L'Espagnol L9 and Levantine Arabic L4.

The next Levantine lesson covers the imperative, present, and subjunctive. Faster pace than Assimil'ṣ MSA. :lol: I guess when you don't teach the script and the dialects are more streamlined to begin with, you can move faster.

I found a nice Urdu Reader called Urdu: Readings in Literary Urdu Prose published for The Department of Indian Studies in 1968 by The University of Wisconsin Press. It looks like a nice mix of readings related to Indian and Islamic culture with graduating difficulty, and written in a clear Nastaliq font. There is no translation, which sucks for self-study, but at least I don't have to squint to read it like some Urdu resources, and there's a vocabulary list and transliteration for vocabulary and conservative use of vowel markings only when necessary. Looking at the first reading, the grammar is easier than what Assimil is covering right now but there is a lot of vocabulary I don't know, as one would expect.

The past few Assimil lessons for Hindi have been slightly boring and meant to hammer a certain grammar point over and over again, and the grammar is becoming increasingly niche. It's helped me a lot, but it's a bit grueling and doesn't help me improve my vocab that much. I usually only use one resource at a time, but it wouldn't hurt to use an Urdu-focused one. I'll think about adding this one!
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
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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 May 28, 2022 12:32 am

I finished Latin L31. Yes, I'm still studying Latin! :D

I briefly fell down a "researching Slavic languages" rabbit hole yesterday. Obviously, Slavic languages are a pretty big blind-spot in the Indo-European language family for me (along with Greek). I would love to learn one eventually purely out of philological interest but I'm not very interested in the area and the recent news has soured me about Russia more than I already was. If I were to learn one, it would probably be Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian. The Balkans is an interesting area, and Bulgarian gets rid of the cases while Serbo-Croatian is a pretty good middle-ground in the family, less complex than Western Slavic for sure and uses both scripts for practice.

Bulgarian itself looks interesting because despite getting rid of cases, it shares a lot of vocabulary with Russian compared to most in the family. I've seen numbers of 60% intelligibility with oral Russian and 70% of written Russian which is surprisingly high. But come on, it's Bulgarian! I have no connection to it and I'm pretty busy already. :lol:

All of my languages I'm learning could be considered major languages. I've never studied a minor one, or a dead one besides Latin. I'm not going to regret studying a bit of Spanish, but eventually, if I get these to a good level, I'll eventually branch out to some more niche languages. I'm someone who's constantly questioning my motivation and choices so I won't start learning a less common language without a good reason. My least popular langauge is probably Levantine Arabic, but it's still the 2nd most common dialect so not obscure by a long shot.

I finally started Hindi L37. It's not especially hard (passive structures), but the notes are overwhelming. I'm still converting each Devanagari card to Urdu as well. It's been good practice. Today, I had to look up how to represent a short final vowel. Theoretically, this should never happen in an Urdu word, but it can happen for Sanskrit loans. It seems you're supposed to use a ھ but I've also seen people mark it as a long vowel or ignore entirely. For example, the Sanskrit word कवि.

It's actually kind of hilarious how cumbersome the Urdu script is compared to how well-suited Devanagari is, but it is what it is. I'm no stranger to unsuitable scripts. Between Japanese, Persian, and Urdu, I spend a good chunk of my day fighting scripts that really aren't suitable for the language. :lol: I'm only lacking Ottoman Turkish.

If I weren't someone who liked this philological aspect of language learning, I would have given up already with these scripts but I enjoy the challenge!
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 » Mon May 30, 2022 2:31 pm

I finished Arabic L30, Persian L39, French L118, and L'Espagnol L10.

Slowly but surely knocking these courses out. I would like to go faster with Arabic but it's so hard to get the words to stick. I had this same problem with Hindi before the phonetics started to feel more natural to me. Vocabulary is so hard to memorize and of course each lesson has new grammar too.

I'm still enjoying Spanish. These beginning lessons are easy, but not easy enough that I can completely skip Anki. Sometimes I'm unsure of a word or a conjugation or just don't feel 100% confident. I can just press the Easy button in Anki a few times and I will only see the card infrequently.
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 » Fri Jun 03, 2022 12:39 am

I finished French L119, Bulgarian L1-L4, Spanish L11.

Yes, I pulled the trigger on Bulgarian. It piques both philological interest (first Slavic language, first Cyrillic language) and cultural interest (first Balkan language, first Orthodox language). In terms of Slavic languages, it seems like a good introduction due to simplified grammar, and it shares much vocab with the East Slavic branch due to Old Church Slavonic influence while also offering some similarities with the South Slavic branch, which seems to have easier pronunciation than the other two branches. It won't help me much at all with West Slavic, but Polish is another goal in the future.

I already know Russian alphabet so it wasn't hard to learn the Bulgarian alphabet, but I'm still bad at reading it and typing it. Practice needed!

I dropped Teach Yourself Urdu and Perfectionnement Allemand is on hold until I finish French Without Toil. My goal is to finish French Without Toil and Le Japonais Sans Peine by end of year.

Spanish motivation hasn't been too high lately. Yes, it's easy, yes, I like seeing similarities, but there's so many lessons to go and "it's useful" isn't enough for me. It's a good textbook, I probably just need to be challenged more with more exciting material because I'm a false beginner in it.
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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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 Jun 03, 2022 3:23 pm

Here is something I'm going to write out for myself, just so I can get a sense of accomplishment and how much I do in Anki/Clozemaster and compare how much input I'm getting. I used to have a very large Anki deck for Chinese characters but I deleted it and switched to Pleco. Those stats are gone, unfortunately so Chinese reviews should be much higher in reality.

New/very small decks and some Clozemasters were omitted because not worth mentioning yet!

Most of these "reviews"are full sentences, although some of the older German/Hindi cards were individual vocabulary words and most of the Chinese reviews are words, not sentences.

German Anki: 66,063 reviews, or 42 reviews/day, 1829 days studied
German Clozemaster: 61,406 reviews, (Multiple Choice: 45177 Text Input: 16229 Listening: 13314)

French Anki: 18,399 reviews, 426 of 428 days studied, 43 reviews/day
French/German Clozemaster: 5913 reviews (Text Input: 2002 Listening: 2409)
French/Chinese Clozemaster: 2167 reviews

Japanese Anki: 26,450 reviews, 81 reviews/day, 329 days
Japanese Clozemaster: 2452 reviews

Hindi/Urdu Anki: 58,551 reviews, 874 days, 68 reviews/day
Hindi Clozemaster: 10560 reviews

Latin Anki: 4227 reviews, 193 days

Persian Anki: 6892 reviews, 44 reviews/day, 157 days

Arabic Levantine Anki: 915 reviews, 17 reviews/day, 53 days
Arabic Anki: 4728 reviews, 36 reviews/day, 130 days

Chinese Pleco: 166,033 reviews

German reviews are about what I expected, and a good example of what small, concerted effort over many years can do. Arabic and Persian are smaller than I expected, but extrapolated over years will add up even if I don't increase the pace, which I likely will. French is smaller than I expected, but a lot of those cards are long sentence cards or even paragraphs of Assimil (premade deck). But compared to say, Hindi and German, French has been not a lot of effort for a lot of reward and future Romance languages will only be easier.

Japanese and Hindi are both larger than I expected. I guess I tackled Japanese pretty heavily last year, and Hindi has been going for multiple years now.

To round it all off, here is what Anki gives for my total study, which I assume includes the deleted Chinese deck:

396,308 reviews
98 reviews/day
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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zenmonkey
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jun 03, 2022 3:32 pm

You are a machine !! Thanks for sharing, those are impressive numbers.
Interestingly I also have 157 days of Persian.
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bolaobo
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Posts: 237
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Fri Jun 03, 2022 4:34 pm

zenmonkey wrote:You are a machine !! Thanks for sharing, those are impressive numbers.
Interestingly I also have 157 days of Persian.


Thank you, let's keep it up!

Persian is a beautiful language and I look forward to continue working on it.
1 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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