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

[Brun Ugle]

Will you be doing a podcast on this? *hint,hint*

[rdearman]

Will you be doing a podcast on this? *hint,hint*

Yes actually. Probably next week, or week after.

[rdearman]

Wow! It's been a long time since I updated this. I've been extremely busy but not particularly busy with languages. Turns out the doing an actual podcast weekly requires a lot of work, time, and research. And you don't actually know if anyone is listening. Although it does seem that people are downloading it so I live in hope. Recently I've been doing a lot of programming work, albeit in assembler language. Yes assembler language. None of that sissified JavaScript, hard-core real programming.

I've also got a lot of electronics that I've been working with recently. I've purchased a Motorola 68000 compatible chip and I've been working on it with bread boards and some adrunino programming. For me it's very interesting to create a computer clock timer on a breadboard and interface it with an old 32 bit CPU. I was planning on building an 8-bit computer, but the 68,000 chip has arrived first and the 8-bit/16-bit CPU won't arrive until November. I have no actual use for this of course other than it's just fun to mess around with electronic chips and machine / assembly language programming.

This past weekend I also signed up for the Ludum Dare 47 game jam. I did the Compo challenge which is to complete a game in 48 hours. You have to do your own graphics, sound effects, programming, music! I managed to publish it about 3 hours before the Compo ending. It is a bit lame, and far too difficult. It doesn't have any easy levels. You can give it a go if you want, it is hosted online. (No, I didn't do it in assembler, I used an easy modern system.)

https://rdearman.itch.io/ludum-dare-47-star-loop
You can get the source code too from my github page if you're interested. The level of competition on these game jams are awesome! I'm actually ashamed of my entry. If I'm going to do this again I'm going to have to get better at 3d modelling (or at least faster) so that I can produce some decent sprites and animations for characters.

As far as languages go, all I really done is a few French language exchanges. I was speaking in Italian for a while but that lady seems to have stopped or gone away now but that happens. I've stopped doing my 30 minutes of Chinese. I stopped on about 2 October and I don't plan to carry on. Once I broke my streak I decided to give up. Especially since the scoring system is too difficult to understand. I'm not really sure that it was helping me anyway, or at least the way I was doing.

I was going to try and do the 366 challenge all the way to the end, but when I missed that day on 2nd of October I decided that it probably wasn't worth carrying on. I did a list of all the stuff that I want or need to do before the end of the year and it turned out to be 16 projects, 15 now that I've written my game in a weekend, and they all take a significant amount of time. Since I can't be everywhere, and I can't do everything, I need to cut some stuff out. I plan to carry on studying Mandarin, but trying to shoe-in a half an hour plus every single day is too difficult.

I was thinking last night that I really wish that I was smart. If I was smarter I would have been able to learn languages in six months to a year like everybody else. Instead, it takes me a long, long time. I realize the reason it takes me so long is I'm not focusing on learning a particular language for a significant amount of time every single day. But that isn't going to change. I was looking at the maths of it all, and thinking that learning had a short half-life. There are half-life mathematical equations. So if you use those equations and plug-in the estimates of forgetting it would seem that I spend a lot of time re-studying material that I've learned but already forgotten.

I also struggle with the fact that reading the data sheet for a 44–20PU AVR microcontroller EEprom probably has more relevance for me than studying French verb conjugation, and honestly, it's more fun! The fact that I have no practical reason for learning French, Italian, or Mandarin is also a factor. So I'm probably going to park language learning for the foreseeable future. I'll probably carry on doing some things, but certainly not planning on adding anything new on my plate.

[tangleweeds]

I love coding in assembler, and am glad there are still reasons to do it! Also, one of the friends I see the most of these days enjoys playing with adrunino and rasberry pi, though he's currently working on Linux 3D camera drivers again. I get to see him often because he's the one person who I/we are pretty certain I gave COVID to back when I had it, and he forgives me because now he doesn't need to stress about it, and we get to hang together in person just like old times.

Anyway, if you enjoy assembler and reading electronics specs, you can't be that dumb. I'm supposedly gifted at languages (however they tested for such aptitudes back in the 1970s), but I certainly don't learn them in 6 months either. I think those outlier stories do more harm than good, in the end creating more discouragement than they ever generated (unrealistic) enthuiasm in the beginning.

As for forgetting, I do lots of that as I'm a wanderluster who switches languages every several months. But I definitely re-learn the stuff I've forgotten much faster than I learn things I've never seen before, and tend to remember it longer afterwards, so I've decided not to stress about it. I have lots more pressing things to stress these days about if I feel the need to stress...

Totally OT: Having listened to your podcasts (very enjoyable, please keep them up!), I keep trying to place your accent. Under a bit of British I hear southern US, but I'd guess either the northern/western part of the South. Maybe Texas? Missouri?

[rdearman]

I love coding in assembler, and am glad there are still reasons to do it! Also, one of the friends I see the most of these days enjoys playing with adrunino and rasberry pi, though he's currently working on Linux 3D camera drivers again. I get to see him often because he's the one person who I/we are pretty certain I gave COVID to back when I had it, and he forgives me because now he doesn't need to stress about it, and we get to hang together in person just like old times.

Anyway, if you enjoy assembler and reading electronics specs, you can't be that dumb. I'm supposedly gifted at languages (however they tested for such aptitudes back in the 1970s), but I certainly don't learn them in 6 months either. I think those outlier stories do more harm than good, in the end creating more discouragement than they ever generated (unrealistic) enthuiasm in the beginning.

As for forgetting, I do lots of that as I'm a wanderluster who switches languages every several months. But I definitely re-learn the stuff I've forgotten much faster than I learn things I've never seen before, and tend to remember it longer afterwards, so I've decided not to stress about it. I have lots more pressing things to stress these days about if I feel the need to stress...

I didn't think about the relearning thing. I was just looking to apply either a harmonic series, or half-life equation to it. But I guess human pshcology can't really be boiled down to a simple equation.

Totally OT: Having listened to your podcasts (very enjoyable, please keep them up!), I keep trying to place your accent. Under a bit of British I hear southern US, but I'd guess either the northern/western part of the South. Maybe Texas? Missouri?

Thanks. (I should be working on one now.) This accent thing comes up a lot. https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 20#p142744 Basically, I've lived in the UK or Ireland for about 30+ years now, but I'm from Ohio, moved to Gerogia, then spent about 5 years in Oklahoma.

[tangleweeds]

Here's a couple of brief Robert Bjork videos on learning that speak to the learning/forgetting/re-learning issue:
(sorry, for some reason I can't get the videos to embed)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6Vye1JCjo
I think this point is particularly relevant to the forgetting/relearning aspect.
"But as we forget, in the sense of losing retrieval strength, then when things are presented, we get a larger increase in storage strength... Forgetting, rather than undoing learning, creates the opportunity to reach additional levels of learning."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQoGUCgb5w
"Storage strength, in this framework, we assume is a pure accumulation process, namely any storage strength you build up, from your past, remains... [mentions how research supports this]... this evidence that no matter how well-learned it becomes in the storage strength sense, it will become inaccessible with a long enough period of disuse...but you can easily see it remains in memory [recognition example]... and if there's any need to re-learn that information, that's greatly accelerated."

[rdearman]

Long time without an update. But I've been busy doing non-language stuff. I'm continued my language exchanges although the Italian lady seems to have fallen off, so no Italian recently.

Yesterday while speaking to my long-term French exchange partner she was really frustrated and annoyed with my inability to understand most spoken French. She said to me; "Why do you not understand!? Your French is so good!"

Perhaps French output and reading, but I struggle to comprehend spoken French. Perhaps it is a mental block, or just not enough practice. So I've promised myself I'll add in some French radio daily. I have a lot of things on my schedule every day, and I'm constantly busy, but never seem to get anything done.

But at least listening to the radio in the background every day isn't a chore really. I just turn it on and give it attention occasionally. I normally pay attention only when people are talking, so the news or traffic reports. She also recommended a couple of childrens/teens YouTube channels to watch. They are pretty interesting, showing how things work or are built, and a channel with some maths instructions. I also found a GoDot game development channel in French. This is easier to understand since I already know the content.

[DaveAgain]

Yesterday while speaking to my long-term French exchange partner she was really frustrated and annoyed with my inability to understand most spoken French. She said to me; "Why do you not understand!? Your French is so good!"

Perhaps French output and reading, but I struggle to comprehend spoken French. Perhaps it is a mental block, or just not enough practice. So I've promised myself I'll add in some French radio daily. I have a lot of things on my schedule every day, and I'm constantly busy, but never seem to get anything done.

You understand your LEP right? It's just recorded media where you have trouble?

[rdearman]

Yesterday while speaking to my long-term French exchange partner she was really frustrated and annoyed with my inability to understand most spoken French. She said to me; "Why do you not understand!? Your French is so good!"

Perhaps French output and reading, but I struggle to comprehend spoken French. Perhaps it is a mental block, or just not enough practice. So I've promised myself I'll add in some French radio daily. I have a lot of things on my schedule every day, and I'm constantly busy, but never seem to get anything done.

You understand your LEP right? It's just recorded media where you have trouble?

Yeah, I understand her. I know the topics we discuss since it is a conversation, so any unknown words are few and she provides translations (sometimes she doesn't actually know the English, so we both stop and look it up!)

Mostly the problem is with TV and Audiobooks.

[rdearman]

Well, we are in December and I haven't done an update since October. A very telling sign I suppose.

Honestly I haven't done much work on any language other than chatting once a week in French. I don't know how much I'm improving by just talking for 30-60 minutes each week. Still that is all I've done. No clozemaster, no anki, no watching TV, nothing. I have watched a couple of YT videos in Mandarin, although that is really just watching and reading subtitles since I don't understand anything.