Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[rdearman]

I actually declared language learning a coding free zone many years ago, because I'm the kind of coder who gets "20h later, forgot to eat and sleep, shouldn't it be daytime instead of sunrise?!" experiences while coding. Too much of a time sink!

As for French numbers: They used to fly past me on the radio too. What helped me was to read a history book - history of photography in that case - and subvocalise every single number instead of reading over them. After 200 pages I pretty much had them down.

Actually, I might do this with the paperback I'm reading now. It isn't full of dates, but it has page numbers.

[rdearman]

I actually declared language learning a coding free zone many years ago, because I'm the kind of coder who gets "20h later, forgot to eat and sleep, shouldn't it be daytime instead of sunrise?!" experiences while coding. Too much of a time sink!

I don't think people realise just how much of a time sink programming really is. Also it is a bit addictive. I don't think programming is so much a skill as an art form. Anyone can learn to paint, but not everyone can be Vincent van Gogh. I have worked with people who are programming artists and have forgotten more about programming then I've ever known.

Eg. environmental variables, paths, processes, protocols, ports.

If you want to learn this stuff, don't look at programming manuals or websites, you want to look for information that system administrators use. SysAdmins have wayyy more knowledge about this kinda stuff than most programmers.

I really should be reading my accounting journal.

We call this "procrastination"

[rdearman]

Donc, bon...

I took the same test for French which I gave everyone for the study I'm doing and man I suck at French! I was very disheartened but I've kept on truckin as they used to say. The vast majority of my time on French is anki cards and audio. I've been watching a lot of video as well, but not getting so much reading time in. This is mostly due to lack of time, but with any luck I'll be able to carve some time back out for reading. I was so annoyed with my scores that I booked extra lessons with my tutor. I still have money in iTalki which I'm not using, after having discovered that someone hacked my skype account and I got locked out of it.

So, I need to create another account and start again. I've managed to get back in touch with a French exchange partner I used to talk to. She's also lapsed her English practice and so we've both agreed to give it another go after I sort out my skype account.

[rdearman]

Man life sucks sometimes. I decide I'm doing all French all the time. I'm concentrating on it and nothing else!!! Then they hire a Mandarin speaker and put her in the seat behind me!

I study Mandarin for fecking ages, can't find a native, park the language for a couple of months and presto native speaker.

I will not wander... will not wander... sigh....

[PeterMollenburg]

Man life sucks sometimes. I decide I'm doing all French all the time. I'm concentrating on it and nothing else!!! Then they hire a Mandarin speaker and put her in the seat behind me!

I study Mandarin for fecking ages, can't find a native, park the language for a couple of months and presto native speaker.

I will not wander... will not wander... sigh....

Wow, that's a real bitch. Life is incredibly odd at times is it not?! It's almost as if life wants you to fail (at French). I say send Mandarin a big French FU in it's Mandarin face, message. -i've nothing against Mandarin, just want rdearman to succeed here- Had you not dabbled in Mandarin though, you wouldn't be a little peeved here tho, so it's your fault rdearman (points accusingly). I can't talk, plenty of dabbling myself in the past. Keep up the French, no distractions, you're doing exceedingly well!

[rdearman]

Well, Mandarin is hitting me from all sides, but I'm ignoring it. The new Mandarin speaker at work speaks to me in Mandarin and encourages me to try to speak back. So I have no plans to stop her, but also I have no plans to dive back into it since I need to do French. But I do have Chinese without Toil in French... so that isn't cheating right?

So, French. I've got an average of one hour of Anki cards per day, some days more, some less, but never less than 40 minutes. I manage to get them done just about every night so far, and I always do 80% or more of them. I've started re-listening to Pimsluer in my car instead of Michel Tomas. This is mostly just for pronunciation practice, and it is nice to do them and know all the words. Like most courses I never actually completed anything past the first set of disks even though I do have all 3 sets for French.

I haven't managed to get a lesson in with the tutor, life is interfering and I've been really busy doing other stuff. I have been asked recently if I'm so lazy, why am I doing so much stuff! It does seem like I've over filled my plate, but I am fitting in most of the things I want to do, but not all of them. One of the things about my anki decks is over the last year (maybe two) I have always put into every new deck one or two cards which just say "Memento mori" or "remember death". Nothing drives me more than my own mortality. Morbid perhaps, but useful because they come up at more or less random intervals in the various decks.

I'm annoyed with myself for switching my phone back to English on the odd occasion but sometimes I really, really, really need to understand what an error message is saying, or some option means. Still, for the most part it is in French more than 90% of any given week. This week however I've been a bad boy and watched a couple of films in English and read a couple of books in English.

I keep meaning to find some recipe website in French so I can load up AntConc and look at a corpus of food words in French. I have a huge hardback book of recipes in French, but not as quick and easy to generate cards from a hardback book!

[DaveBee]

I keep meaning to find some recipe website in French so I can load up AntConc and look at a corpus of food words in French. I have a huge hardback book of recipes in French, but not as quick and easy to generate cards from a hardback book!

I keep meaning to read a french language cookery book, but I never actually do it. I may have to be a bit more disciplined about a 'first in, first out' policy for my book-pile.

[rdearman]

I decided to do this cooking thing.

Found a bunch of pdf's with recipes.

Code: Select all

file-type pdf livre de recettes

Downloaded 15, one was a real score of 278 vegetarian recipes.
Converted to txt

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for a in *.pdf; do; ebook-convert $a $a.txt; done

Dumped all the text files into AntCOnv and generated a 9500+ word list.
Uploaded to google sheets as a csv and added another column to translate.

Code: Select all

=GOOGLETRANSLATE(A1,"fr","en")

Copy and paste into excel and added a column to number all the lines, and a second column to mark all entries were the first word was equal to the translation. (eg google couldn't translate it)

Code: Select all

=IF(A1=B1,"X","")

Sorted by the X column, deleted the ones with X's, then resorted by the numbers.

This got me down to 5500+ words. Now just going through and deleting the words I know.

[rdearman]

Here is the food_corpus in Excel with French, IPA, English.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_CndRsAmH8weVNLbktWMjhQelk

[rdearman]

A very long time ago I found a book which taught Spanish. This was a small book intended for children and it was the first time I realised that a language could actually be learned and it wasn't just something other people did. I was probably about 8-10 at the time. This memory popped up in my head this weekend. I remember the drawing of a peasant girl in traditional dress. I have no idea why I am mentioning this.

Not a lot of progress this week and I seem to have reverted to type. I have done a lot of anki work, and watched a lot of video, but nothing with grammar, nor have I done any shadowing or speaking practice. I've added the cooking / recipe words and I'm enjoying them. I don't know how I'm going to get more output going, but I will need too. Anki takes at least one hour each day, but I have done it every day. I've started to repeat the prompts out loud which is a bit of shadowing. Not doing any reading although I do have a book which I want to read lined up on my kindle. It is a SciFi book which emk recommended awhile back.

The D&D words have come in useful. I heard the word "niveau" (level) in a different context because someone was talking about language levels on YouTube. I also heard another one which I don't remember, but wasn't in a D&D context.

I've been using HelloTalk, but this as usual not much use beyond hello and how are you. I have put in some extra effort to try and get more meat into the conversations, but it isn't really going well. I plan to get a new Skype account and use the iTalki credits I've bought.

Still listening to Pimsluer in the car, but it is a bit like pulling teeth since I really don't enjoy it.

Finally I have been looking at paying for some intensive classes in France, Belgium, or some other French speaking country. I'm thinking it might be worth just unplugging myself from my life in order to get some time, and dedicate myself to learning French. This is an expensive option however! So probably will not be doing it.