Dan Lernt Deutsch, Take Three! (YouTube Video Practice)

[Khayyam]

I read Der Brief fuer den Koenig after Steppenwolf. Fun, easy, and innocent--a nice break from the heavy lifting.

But now I'm back to the heavy, and to be honest, I'm having a much better time. Current project: Reading *The Sorrows of Young Werther* while listening to it being read. I already read it without the audio and circled all the words and phrases I'm uncertain about (of which there are many), and I'm now in the process of looking up the words and making my vocab lists as I both read and listen. I tackle about 30 pages a day in this way. Once I've read the whole thing again, I might make a third pass--something I've not done before--by listening to it during a hike.

I think I'll read all of Goethe's novels before I move onto any other books. When I read most books, there's always a nagging part of me that says, "Is this really the BEST use of my time? But when I read Goethe, that doubt is entirely absent. Which is not to say it's fun to read a book about smashed hope and suicide, but fun's not everything. Some anti-escapist art is necessary.

Edit: if you want to read DIe Leiden des jungen Werthers, definitely don't get the edition from thevirtuallibrary.org that's sold on Amazon. It's not only riddled with typos, but there are at least two places where entire lines are missing.

[Khayyam]

Ich bin sehr gluecklich, ich muss sagen, ueber meiner Fortschritt. (Mit Lesen und Hoeren, immerhin. Was meine Grammatik angeht...aber ich habe das Geschichte mehr als einmal erzaehlt, glaube ich.)

Ich habe gerade ein weiteres Buch von Goethe beendet: Unterhaltungen Deutscher Ausgewanderten und andere Novellen. Ich kann nicht ehrlich sagen, dass ich viel Spass dabei hatte. Obwohl ich die meisten Wörter verstand, und bin fast sicher, dass ich hätte das Buch fast genauso gut verstanden, wenn es auf Englisch gewesen wäre, die Geschichten selbst war...na ja, ich wage es nicht, doof zu sagen, weil ich bin ich und Goethe ist Goethe, und zweifellos, wenn ich denke, dass Goethe doof ist, dann es ist sicher, dass ich der Doofkopf bin--na ja, Sie wissen, was ich versuche zu sagen, oder? Haben Sie dieses Buch gelesen? Was denken Sie? Ich bin ein bisschen traurig, weil ich vermute, dass ich viel Spass verpasst habe, weil ich nicht schlau genug bin, um Goethe voellig zu verstehen.

Oh BTW, since this is ostensibly a speaking practice log and I've not posted a clip in forever, here's one of me reading the first page of Max und Moritz. Do I sound any more German than before?

https://vocaroo.com/1kVxDrDrxvON

And now onto some Persian stuff:

I remember I started a Persian log eons ago, but I think I'm just going to let that die and share all my language progress here. Maybe change the title of the log. So, Persian: I just bought two primers for little kids that are supposed to teach you to write all the letters and a few hundred basic words. The Persian script is just *so* beautiful, and I'm dying to get started. Bet my Persian handwriting will be better than my English handwriting ever was, simply because I care. I might try writing with my left (non-dominant) hand. Don't really know why; just seems like the thing to do. I might post some samples to see what people think.

[Khayyam]

Working through Persian Script Hacking to learn the Persian alphabet. This is turning out to be much easier than I expected. Persian looks terribly daunting if you don't know anything about it, but it's really not that bad.

My Persian handwriting, on the other hand...oh, God. I know I said I'd post some samples, but I've gotta get better than this first. At least I seem to understand the principles; when I check the back of the book, I usually find that I made all the right marks. They're just not pretty. In fairness to myself, though, I don't know how you could make writing look the way it does in the book with a regular old pen. Seems like you'd need some kind of brush.

I've been reading about the ancient Persian empire, and that's piqued my interest in ancient empires in general. I googled "world's oldest empire" last night, and now--well, I'm seriously considering learning to read Akkadian. There's even an Akkadian-learning textbook in German! How can I resist?

I wonder if there are any Pilates or yoga videos in Akkadian. Hey, it's 2022--I'm entitled to this, right?

[Khayyam]

I don't think I ever concentrate better on spoken material than I do when hiking downhill after hiking hard uphill. Heavy music in my TL on the way up, podcasts on the way back down. Highly recommend trying this if you have access to a place to hike and need to burn off stress before you can fully concentrate.

[Khayyam]

I've gone full Persian, more or less (I still listen to my German podcasts, but that's just chillaxxing rather than working at this point), so I should really change the name of my log. Maybe it should be called "Dilettante Dan somethingsomething" because I jump from one thing to another so often. Well, I mean, there are worse things you could do with your life than develop an ability to listen to podcasts in 12 languages even though you can't really speak any of them, right?

I'm very slowly digesting (assimilating?) a Persian version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Wild Swans. My goal is to memorize the entire thing and recite it. This is my first Persian project other than learning the alphabet, and as you'd expect, I'm sweating buckets. The main reason I'm taking this path is that I think it'll lead to the top of Mt. Vocab faster in the long run. Getting as many words committed to long-term memory as quickly as possible is the name of the game, and what better way to start off than by repeating a simple story so many times that a hammer and chisel couldn't dislodge its words from my brain?

My way is also more motivating (for me) because I get to start right off by learning interesting words and idioms rather than the standard tiresome hi-how-are-you-my-name-is mucketty-muck. I already know that "time was, time was not" is a way of saying "once upon a time" in Persian, and I know that you can describe the occurrence of twilight by saying the sun *did* twilight. I know words for "majestic" and "wicked." I also know how to say one, two, eleven, and twelve, but that's boring and incidental. It does show, however, that I need make no special effort to learn the basic numbers; if I just keep on reading, I'll inevitably learn them all. Why does anyone spend any time at all memorizing boring, basic words in isolation when they could simply start reading immediately and learn words as they encounter them? It's also more engaging, more like solving a puzzle, to need to look up a new word to understand what's happening, than it is to have the word presented to you first like plain tuna on a grey platter and then have someone trot out some probably-very-lame example of how to use it.

Since my vocab is so small, I've been including every word in the story on my vocab list. Here's an example, if you're interested.

The Wild Swans Vocab Words

Page 16


L1: ELISA / رسیدند : arrived / سر : head/end/tip/at/on / کنان : ???
پرواز : flight/flying / سفید : white / SWANS / ELEVEN / WHO-THAT-WHICH / WAS / زرسیده : overdue(?) / آنجا : there/yonder/thither

L2: TO-IN-ON / HER/HIS BROTHERS / NEXT-SUBSEQUENT /
لحظه : instant/minute/second/flash / .انداخت : threw/dropped / گزنه : nettle / FROM /
لباسی : dress/clothing/garb / ONE/A هر : any/each/every / UPON / بی درنگ : without delay

L3: نشده : not done / بافته : woven/tissue-web-weave / کامل : full-complete-perfect /
لباسش : his/her clothes / THAT-WHO-WHICH / کوچکتر : smaller-lesser-minor-beneath /
BROTHER / تنها : only-alone-single .ایستادند : they stood/stand-stop-abide /
مقابلش : in front of her/him / آدم : human / شکل : shape-form-figure

L4: .Was / کرده : done / حفظ : keep-preservation-protection / هنوز : still-as-yet-nevertheless
بال را : wing-direct-object / ONE-A / دست : arm(itc)-paw-fin-hand / ONE-A /
بجای : instead of/in lieu of / ,was

Explanation: The list for each line should be read right to left, just like in Persian. I use forward slashes with lots of space around them to clearly separate words. "itc" means "in this context" (used if a word has multiple, very different meanings but only one of them applies). If I know a word very well and don't need the Persian translation, I type it in English in all caps as a placeholder. (It would make more sense to use the Persian without the English translation. I'll likely do that from now on.) If a word has multiple meanings, I string several candidates for translation together so I can get a better sense of the word's true, possibly untranslatable meaning.

I don't make any real effort to memorize the list; I just refer to it as necessary as I (re-re-re-re-) read-listen-recite.

Just btw: I love the way Persian indicates subject-object by changing the endings of words, rather than by word order. Getting used to being on alert for the "ra" to know which thing is the direct object is like learning a new, addictive dance.

[Khayyam]

Been listening to the Persian rapper Yas while doing a little yoga. I've got to say I'm pleased as punch by how effortlessly I'm picking up words and phrases I've learned from the aforementioned insane, obsessive book-memorization exercise. I think I'll be brazen enough to skip the slowly-spoken-as-if-to-a-five-year-old stuff for learners entirely this time around, and possibly even all material intended for learners, and go straight to mass-inputting all kinds of spoken Persian intended for native speakers. I probably won't make any special effort to understand most of it; I optimistically expect that understanding will inevitably come as my vocabulary grows from grinding through books.

[Khayyam]

I've just about reached the point where I can discard my vocab lists for The Wild Swans, which will be immensely satisfying. I don't know most of the words nearly well enough to recall them to use them, but I know them well enough to recognize them in context. I believe I can now trust continued repetition of the story sans lists to finish the job of hammering them into my long-term memory.

Vocab lists, IMO, should be the most temporary kind of scaffolding. It's exhilarating to kick it away as my building solidifies.

Aaand they're gone!

I just added a bunch of podcasts for small Persian children to my subscriptions. I think it'll be nice to return to the land of G-rated innocence for a while every time I start a new language. Even listening to stuff I hardly understand is pleasant, because nothing really bad ever happens in this domain. (Yeah, I'm the same guy who's complained vociferously about the general absence of stories geared toward adult learners. Well, let's just say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of blahblah and leave it at that. At least I'm consistent with language-learning itself, right?)

[Khayyam]

Skipped what would have no doubt been a raging Halloween party last night (which is saying something because I adore Halloween) to spend hours listening to a few simple Persian stories over and over. I was already in my costume, but I realized that I'm so impatient to bring my Persian up to the level where I can walk or hike and listen to podcasts in the language that I'm willing to forego a party.
So I sat down with my costume still on, which gave me the feeling that I was kinda-sorta still celebrating Halloween, and fired up the videos.

There's no question that my immersing myself in The Wild Swans the way I did paid off in terms of vocab acquisition. Any time I see or hear a word that I learned from that book, I get it. I've got to say that the repetition has rather ruined the story for me, though. I kinda wish i could wipe it from my brain but retain the vocab.