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

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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Jun 30, 2022 3:55 pm

rdearman wrote:I was really inspired to watch this young English chap who went from zero to advanced conversational level in only a year and a half. (He also studied 4-6 hours per day in a covid lockdown, but lets ignore the hard work and assume he is just good at languages.)


Very inspiring!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby Axon » Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:09 am

rdearman wrote:Mandarin
I was really inspired to watch this young English chap who went from zero to advanced conversational level in only a year and a half. (He also studied 4-6 hours per day in a covid lockdown, but lets ignore the hard work and assume he is just good at languages.)


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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:35 pm

rdearman wrote: It is a little annoying that I can't use the Amazon Polly with Mandarin to make audio sentences.

What's the issue here?

I can recommend HyperTTS (by the programmer that did Awesome TTS) in Anki - it uses the various TTS engines to output your audio sentences. Been using it for 6 months with little issue after setup.

Edit: just saw your post on the topic.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:54 pm

Mandarin
My memory is like a sieve. I pour stuff in, but it all just pours out again. I did manage two language exchanges and basically confirmed my tiny little islands with the native speakers. My pronunciation seems OK, so I just need to keep practising and adding to them. I should really put my Mandarin anki deck out of archive and put it back. The problem with that is I have soooooo much Korean to do with anki each day, it really isn't feasible to add in any more decks. So the plan right now is to muddle through as good as I can with a couple of hours of language exchange and a little time with some study. Perhaps, I might return to doing some Hanzi. But this really isn't my priority, so I'm ok with being a little blasé about it.

Korean
I've completed another lesson, and we're working on which verbs to use for various activities. For example, you "hit golf" (play golf), but you "do backgammon", and you "ride skates". I've been focusing on anki, and I've populated every Korean word I have encountered so far into the deck. I've been spending a couple of hours per day on anki. Likewise, I've also had a couple of language exchanges, and I'm trying to build up a lot of small sentences which I can turn into a dialogue or even one day perhaps a conversation. I still need to work on getting used to saying sentences, and I need to start speaking to myself. Meanwhile, I'm watching a huge amount of K-dramas.

Italian
I had three Italian exchanges, and I'll probably have another 3 this week. LE's are sufficient for me in Italian right now, it keeps it ticking over in my head for a couple of hours per week. I'm not learning much, but it does force me to remember stuff.

French
Both French people bailed out on me this week, but should have another LE in French on Friday. This is the lowest priority language, so not a problem if I miss some.

General Stuff
I'm trying to consolidate all the notes that I've taken during my Korean lessons, and I'm making sure I have typed every single word into the anki deck. I'm doing at leat an hour per day of Korean anki cards. This will probably tail off as I get more mature cards, but it helps me focus. K-Drama's aren't helping all that much when I watch with subtitles, so I'm trying to watch another series in parallel to watching one with the wife. If we watch together, then have to have subtitles. Which is fine it is still exposure, but the series without subtitles is more beneficial since I really need to pay attention and try to grab any word I know in order to gain some understanding.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Wed Jul 13, 2022 9:29 pm

Mandarin
OK, Mandarin seems to be annoyed with the time off I took, and now I seem to be flooded with Language Exchange requests from the majority of the Chinese population. Anyway, this week I had two LE in Mandarin, and looks like I'll be adding a 3rd next week. I dug out the old anki deck of "Spoon-fed Chinese" and against all the advice I wiped the deck and reset it so that I'm back at square one. I have generated some simple "Islands" and I practice them with the LE partners, then we speak in English. Some of the stuff I forgot is coming back, and so this week's LE's were slightly more interesting since I could remember a few more words and phrases. Hopefully I'll get some more stuff crawling out of the holes in the back of my brain.

Korean
My wife had a nice long chat with one of my Korean exchange partners. She'd recommended a village to visit while we were in Seoul, and my wife wanted to thank her personally. The wife used a bit of Korean she'd learned from various k-drama, and I was told afterwards that my wife's pronunciation is better than mine. :x Oh well, I can mispronounce more words than my wife, and I can misspell and mispronounce in more languages than her too. Ha!

I've been hitting the anki deck hard, and I've managed to get it down to about 300 cards for reviews. (It was awful, and man am I struggling) But pressing on. I had my lesson again this week, where I was given even more vocabulary, but interestingly we spent a lot of the time with "shall we?" type questions and modifying the verbs I already know. Shall we eat, shall we rest, shall we play golf, etc, etc.

I found an IPTV player, and it has a Korean kids channel, so I might watch some of those, but I watch a boat-load of dramas, so I probably don't need much more of that type of exposure. I need to seriously work on reading.

As mentioned before, a couple of LE and one lesson this week. (You'd think I would be better at this stuff).

Italian
Only one LE in Italian, the other two bailed on me. But it was interesting, and I was told I really need to work on my past tenses.

French
All of the French LE failed.

General Stuff
Thursdays are normally the big day for LE and me. I have like 4 on a Thursday.
  • 0900 - Mandarin
  • 1100 - Korean
  • 1500 - Italian
  • 2000 - Italian

I was using memory palaces to remember vocabulary in Korean. It seemed to be working, but was a bit of a time sink. I stopped doing the mental reviews, but after going back to anki it seems that those techniques did work, however because I wasn't picturing the actual written word in Hangul it is more difficult to recall them when the anki deck quizzes me. But they did stick, so I think I need to go back and work my way through those lists again. I need to break all the words up in the themes, or try to find a thematic dictionary for Korean.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Sun Jul 24, 2022 11:42 am

Mandarin
I have managed 2 language exchanges this week in Mandarin, again these are laughingly called exchanges because they mostly happen in English. However, I'm working to build up some islands that I know, and I'm working with my LE partners to sharpen the pronunciation and make sure the sentences are native usage. I'm also continuing with using my "Spoonfed Chinese" deck, which annoyingly is so old that the links to the character dictionary site is depreciated.

Korean
Doing lessons, and we've now moved on to conjugations of irregular verbs. I'm doing anki and clozemaster for Korean. The anki deck has settled down now to about 200 reviews per day, and I've limited new cards to 9 per day. I don't know many of the words in the clozemaster sentences, but I can often figure them out because of the grammar knowledge I have built up. I know when it is looking for a verb or adjective and I can eliminate a couple of options from the "multiple guess".

I have created another conjugation spreadsheet for the verbs I have, and I'm slowly working my way through it and trying to conjugate all of them. It reinforces the conjugates and also hopefully will help me spot the irregular ones.

I've watched 100 films for the super-challenge in Korean. Don't really feel there is a lot of improvement, although I do now spot more words which I know when they are speaking. I need to move to watching k-dramas without subtitles, but then I can't watch them with my wife. :( So I think I might try to find an audiobook.

Italian
Did a couple of language exchanges and read a couple of chapters in my Italian book. I've been slacking off and only reading a page or two per week, and so I thought I really need to buckle down and knock these books out, especially since books in other languages are slowly building up.

French
Nice long language exchange in French, not much else to discuss. French is just existing at the moment.

General Stuff
I'm just not getting done all the stuff I want to do. No podcast series start, no YouTube video, no writing, no electronics stuff, no programming. I've just been sitting around and binge watching "My name is Earl". :roll: :shock: In English too, so no value there.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 24, 2022 12:06 pm

rdearman wrote:French
Nice long language exchange in French, not much else to discuss. French is just existing at the moment.

General Stuff
I'm just not getting done all the stuff I want to do. No podcast series start, no YouTube video, no writing, no electronics stuff, no programming. I've just been sitting around and binge watching "My name is Earl". :roll: :shock: In English too, so no value there.
Earl's a nice guy, doing his best, good company in any language :-)

I recently learnt that Le retour of Martin Guerre is based on a true story, looking for another version of that led me to a book series called "crimes célèbres" - perhaps those could provide fodder for a podcast or writing project?
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:19 pm

Mandarin
The mandarin language exchange requests just keep pouring in! I'm a little spoilt for choice now, but my mandarin has deteriorated so badly that it might as well be non-existent. Honestly, it is non-existent. I have decided that 3 language exchange partners for a language which I'd parted is quite enough. So I'm just going to refuse anyone else, regardless of how much sympathy I have for them. I'm not doing anything, even the anki deck for mandarin I'm only doing sporadically. This is because the Korean deck takes up all my time. I need better time management.

Korean
This week's lesson got side tracked by me because I asked my teacher to review the list of verbs I'm learning and to point out if any of them are irregular. I am not seeing any progress in Korean. It is really very discouraging to feel that you are putting in a ton of work, but that I'm just bouncing words off my head. Nothing seems to penetrate my hard head. :( I struggle to make sentences, I struggle with pronunciation, and frankly I struggle with everything. Even simple sentences are a pain.

No point moaning about it, since it is all just grist for the mill and will eventually get me to the point of actually speaking. I've decided I really need to start speaking during my language exchanges, even if it is just the canned sentences which I know. I've also managed to sign up a 3rd person for language exchanges in Korean. Like mandarin, there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of people to talk to (if I could talk).

I've topped 100 films in Korean, doesn't seem to have done a lot of good for me. I can pick out any more words than before. I think I need to start reading more if I'm ever going to start to understand. My vocabulary is very, very small and certainly isn't sufficient to understand any k-drama. But reading is sooooooo painfully slow!

I need better time management.

Italian
Didn't do any LE in Italian, either my partners bailed or I did. I have done a couple dozen pages of my gigantic Italian book about Alexander the Great. I'm almost at the end of book one. It is a multiple volume book, so three books in one tome.

French
Didn't get a chance to speak in French this week. So nothing happened in French.

General Stuff
Most of this week I have felt like Sisyphus. But hoping that just continuing to plug away at Korean and Mandarin will let me see some kind of improvement. I was interested in how long it takes people outside of Korea to learn Korean.

From the 90 day Korean website:
It takes 3 months (90 days) to learn enough Korean to have a 3-minute conversation in Korean if you study for 7-10 hours per week. After 1 year of studying at this pace, you can become conversationally fluent.

I call bollocks. I've been doing an hour per day for almost 1 year now, and I can't have a 3-second conversation.

Rocket Languages thinks that to get to a B2 level.
equates to a total of between 1,000 and 1,200 hours.

Can't call bollocks yet, since I've probably only done about 500+ hours (not counting watching k-dramas) but it doesn't seem likely to me that I'll be at B2 level after another 500 hours. But never say never.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:52 pm

rdearman wrote: I was interested in how long it takes people outside of Korea to learn Korean.
A Korean lady at the Expolingua trade fair said you can learn hangul in a month.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Tue Aug 02, 2022 1:50 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
rdearman wrote: I was interested in how long it takes people outside of Korea to learn Korean.
A Korean lady at the Expolingua trade fair said you can learn hangul in a month.

Oh you can learn hangul in an hour. The alphabet is easy. It is the rest of the language that is hard. :lol:
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