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

[zenmonkey]

...
Good point, some languages you might just have the Bible and no audio.

I don't think you can learn a language well like that.

I’d have to disagree. I mean, I use the Bible for my LR because I personally and professionally know it super well and enjoy reading it. Were I inclined or had need, I’m pretty certain I could get quite far like that, well enough for regular interaction with non-tutor speakers to iron out any anachronisms.

You do LR without audio? And you are already adding speakers to the equation. From what rdearman wrote, I understand it's situations where it is difficult to get speakers or audio...

Ok I’m going to now have to admit I skipped right over the “no” in that until you bolded it.

In the original version, I was saying I could get to a level that, assuming I encountered native speakers, I’d be able to figure out what about my speech patterns sounded odd to them.

Now, with no audio...yeah I could probably learn to read well and write said language passably, assuming I knew the script. I’d probably have terrible pronunciation, assuming I had a pronunciation guide of some sort. Without it, yeah, little chance of saying much right.

I mean, this is all a speculation in a rather odd situation - if I had a genuine need to learn language X with just a Bible, I’m going to have to assume that somewhere down the road I’m going to have to interact with said lanaguge (probably speakers), and I figure I’ve got a decent chance of learning well enough to get where I could interact with monolingual speakers well enough, and progress from there. I’m having to assume that there’s some sort of end-state need for the lanaguge if I’m going to learn it in that manner, and on that assumption, I could probably do it well enough to meet the need-goal and refine though use.

I may have some background info you are missing. Rdearman, myself and a few others set ourselves the task of learning Setswana. Along the way we discovered that finding speakers locally was rather difficult and our audio resources were poor. We mostly gave up. We didn't have a genuine need to learn the language.

In fact, for most of us, now learning an nth language is an act of pleasure and not necessity. So I was imaging that situation.

Now - throw my in the 1700's with a Bible in Mexico colonial and I would have learned Zapotec, no problem. Today? It's a bigger challenge.

[Systematiker]

]

I may have some background info you are missing. Rdearman, myself and a few others set ourselves the task of learning Setswana. Along the way we discovered that finding speakers locally was rather difficult and our audio resources were poor. We mostly gave up. We didn't have a genuine need to learn the language.

In fact, for most of us, now learning an nth language is an act of pleasure and not necessity. So I was imaging that situation.

Now - throw my in the 1700's with a Bible in Mexico colonial and I would have learned Zapotec, no problem. Today? It's a bigger challenge.

I actually remember Rick struggling with it - didn’t he find an audio Bible though?

That’s actually some of my starting premise - I better doggone well need it if I’m gonna try to learn it like that!

[StringerBell]

Do you think you would enjoy this process more if you could include some TV episodes instead of just audiobooks/novels? For example, if you had an accurate transcript of an episode or more of Camionisti in Trattoria (or cough cough Lucifer) do you think multiple listens would be less annoying?

Considering that episodes are comprised of 100% dialogue, I'd think they would lend themselves more to increasing conversation comprehension, whereas the audiobook/novel approach would be better for improving general reading.

[rdearman]

Do you think you would enjoy this process more if you could include some TV episodes instead of just audiobooks/novels? For example, if you had an accurate transcript of an episode or more of Camionisti in Trattoria (or cough cough Lucifer) do you think multiple listens would be less annoying?

Considering that episodes are comprised of 100% dialogue, I'd think they would lend themselves more to increasing conversation comprehension, whereas the audiobook/novel approach would be better for improving general reading.

Maybe, but I have watched a lot of tv. I am not sure.

[Brun Ugle]

]

I may have some background info you are missing. Rdearman, myself and a few others set ourselves the task of learning Setswana. Along the way we discovered that finding speakers locally was rather difficult and our audio resources were poor. We mostly gave up. We didn't have a genuine need to learn the language.

In fact, for most of us, now learning an nth language is an act of pleasure and not necessity. So I was imaging that situation.

Now - throw my in the 1700's with a Bible in Mexico colonial and I would have learned Zapotec, no problem. Today? It's a bigger challenge.

I actually remember Rick struggling with it - didn’t he find an audio Bible though?

That’s actually some of my starting premise - I better doggone well need it if I’m gonna try to learn it like that!

I thought it was without audio. If there’d been audio, I would have listened to it.

And of course, what you say is very true. I love learning languages, but couldn’t get into Setswana for several reasons. The lack of good resources was one of them, but technically we had enough resources to do it. I think the lack of passion was more important. I think you need a certain total combined amount of resources plus passion. The less you have of one, the more you need of the other. I’m pretty sure I could learn a language like French without feeling too passionate about it because there are tons of good resources. I wouldn’t have to think too much, just pick a couple of resources and go through them day by day almost mechanically. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s a relatively easy language to learn. I’m sure I could learn a language with very few resources also, but only if I were madly in love with that language, because only that kind of passion would make me sit down with nothing but the Bible in English and language X or a bunch of JW tracts and decipher it bit by bit. An intense love for the language even makes that kind of work fun. Even so, without some kind of access to native speakers or something to use my language abilities on, I don’t think I’d get that far or be able to retain it long-term. I think for me, I would have been better off learning one of the many languages that is actually spoken in my town rather than something picked for me by someone else and for which I have no use. Maybe I’ll try that one day and see how it is to learn a language that I have some chance of using in my environment, but for which there are few good resources.

[zenmonkey]

I may have some background info you are missing. Rdearman, myself and a few others set ourselves the task of learning Setswana. Along the way we discovered that finding speakers locally was rather difficult and our audio resources were poor. We mostly gave up. We didn't have a genuine need to learn the language.

In fact, for most of us, now learning an nth language is an act of pleasure and not necessity. So I was imaging that situation.

Now - throw my in the 1700's with a Bible in Mexico colonial and I would have learned Zapotec, no problem. Today? It's a bigger challenge.

I actually remember Rick struggling with it - didn’t he find an audio Bible though?

That’s actually some of my starting premise - I better doggone well need it if I’m gonna try to learn it like that!

I thought it was without audio. If there’d been audio, I would have listened to it.

And of course, what you say is very true. I love learning languages, but couldn’t get into Setswana for several reasons. The lack of good resources was one of them, but technically we had enough resources to do it. I think the lack of passion was more important. I think you need a certain total combined amount of resources plus passion. The less you have of one, the more you need of the other. I’m pretty sure I could learn a language like French without feeling too passionate about it because there are tons of good resources. I wouldn’t have to think too much, just pick a couple of resources and go through them day by day almost mechanically. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s a relatively easy language to learn. I’m sure I could learn a language with very few resources also, but only if I were madly in love with that language, because only that kind of passion would make me sit down with nothing but the Bible in English and language X or a bunch of JW tracts and decipher it bit by bit. An intense love for the language even makes that kind of work fun. Even so, without some kind of access to native speakers or something to use my language abilities on, I don’t think I’d get that far or be able to retain it long-term. I think for me, I would have been better off learning one of the many languages that is actually spoken in my town rather than something picked for me by someone else and for which I have no use. Maybe I’ll try that one day and see how it is to learn a language that I have some chance of using in my environment, but for which there are few good resources.

Resources + passion. Ok, I think this is definitely worth discussing.

First off, I got (willingly) dragged into Setswana. It wasn't even a language I was particularly aware of but somehow we decided that this was our equidistant language for a group of people. R. had studied it a little but none of us knew it and we decided to go study it.

Frankly, for me the choice of that language was largely due to social pressure. But, once selected, the rest of the challenge, the initial difficulty of finding material, the need to chop up existing material, the rarity of the language in my daily environment were more motivation than anything else. This was a challenge!! This was cool!! And so, down the rabbit hole I went. I discovered things along the way (for, example - Brun Ugle really knows how to study pronunciation and she's got a pretty good language memory).

As we went through the available material, we slowly lost motivation. Some slower than others. And eventually, finding myself mostly alone with the language - well, what was the point? So a small part of my demotivation was also the loss of the group. I like to do things with others, I find them motivating. Maybe it is partially the gamification that helped.

Part of my personal demotivation was the lack of personal or cultural attachment to the language. For example, many of the twitter / fb feeds that I found that used Setswana were uninteresting or downright vulgar. So slowly I dropped those. Finding a literary corpus? Difficult. Historical references that have some meaning for me? Not really.

But there is the sunk time fallacy and my constant inability to drop things I've started that might get me to try it again. But for now Setswana is on a shelf.

This is also why I won't dedicate any time to learning Polish. I mistrust the social push to commit to this effort and my own personal motives for the language are ... complex. I'll learn a few minimal phrases beyond what I already know before going there but the core of my language-learning efforts will be elsewhere.

Hmmm, sorry for the hijack, R.!

[rdearman]

No worries that sort of sums up the situation. Also my reasoning behind Polish

[Brun Ugle]

I feel a bit the same way about Polish. It’s not a language I feel passionately about at the moment and that makes it hard to really get started, especially since there are other languages I am passionate about. I’m finding it a lot easier than Setswana even so, simply because there do exist reasonably good resources. It might not be on the same level as Spanish and German when it comes to resources, but it’s far ahead of Setswana. There is also the motivation of there being plenty of books and TV once I get far enough along; even our local library has a few shelves of books in Polish. And there are quite a few Polish speakers living around here, so it probably won’t be hard to find someone to talk to when I’m ready.

[rdearman]

I don't really do any study at the weekends other than keeping my Clozemaster streak going by doing reviews. Saturday I opened it up to find 334 reviews due. I decided to do all of them as Cloze rather than Multiple Guess. Turns out I shot right up the rankings and made it into the top 10 at number 9 for the weekly ratings. I believe it is better for me, so although painfully slow when compared to the multiple-guess method, I really need to do it the hard way.

I dropped into 5 guys with the family this weekend and while trying to pay the credit card machine kept failing (bad connections) and the fellow serving me had an accent, so I asked where he was from (I figured he was Italian or Spanish), he was Italian. So I managed to get a 4-5 minute conversation in while we all waited for the CC machine to act right. He was telling me he was training to be a pilot, and I got a lost at that point, but it was fun.

[rdearman]

OK, back on track with the L-R tonight I did a couple of minutes under 2 hours (1 hour 58 minutes) and decided to quit at the start of the new chapter. This books audio is more equally distributed and every couple of audio tracks will be at the start of a chapter. I have also done a language exchange tonight with an Italian lady who've I've not spoken to before but had no trouble understanding. I was very impressed with myself for understanding everything she said, although she burst my bubble later when she told me she normally speaks slowly during LE's. Oh well. I have two more Italian LE's this week and a French on on Thursday.

I'm off for a weeks walking holiday from the 7th, so I will not really do anything other than try to keep my Clozemaster streak alive. I've managed 69 days. I had a nice streak going where I was getting at least 500 points per day, but because I didn't have time last Friday to do more than a few reviews, I broke that streak. That was part of the reason for doing all 334 as Cloze on the Saturday.