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

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

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Aug 26, 2022 11:46 am

rdearman wrote:General Stuff
I haven't spoken for a while about memory palaces or other mnemonic methods, but I have been participating on a memory forum and looking into it more. I kicked off a thread over there: Controversial, what is the point of mnemonics? (Yeah, I know, how to win friends and influence people, call their hobby pointless. :D) Most took it with good humour and could see that what I was saying was that the opportunities to use mnemonics seemed limited and asking for more example usage.

I've also been independently looking into memory techniques. I read a book recently which maps memory techniques to computer data structures like linked lists, arrays, structs/classes, skip lists, Karnaugh maps, etc. I can see more potential of mnemonics beyond just simple ordered lists and large numbers now with this additional information.

So with all this in mind, I've started another log over there where I plan to explore using mnemonics to encode things into memory I might need. I haven't found this to be particularly useful for Korean, or not any better or worse than just using Anki and reading. I plan to keep these two activities separate, but where there is some overlap, e.g. memorisation of Korean vocabulary, grammar rules, etc. or memorisation of Hanzi characters for Mandarin, then I might cross post.

Hopefully the people on that forum will be as happy to offer advice and assistance in my log as people here are. If you're interested in memory techniques, competitions, etc it is worth visiting https://forum.artofmemory.com/ they also have a lot of non-English areas to discuss memory as well.
RE: memory catergories, I think in The Loom of Language in noun genders/classes the author listed some languages with serveral with particular grouping - living things, wooden things etc and speculated on the number in the ur-language of mankind - you sometimes hear cases of brain damaged people with odd holes in their memories - names of mammals, proper nouns etc - my point being that perhaps the brain/language-unit is set up to store things in defined categories?
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Fri Aug 26, 2022 12:51 pm

DaveAgain wrote:RE: memory catergories, I think in The Loom of Language in noun genders/classes the author listed some languages with serveral with particular grouping - living things, wooden things etc and speculated on the number in the ur-language of mankind - you sometimes hear cases of brain damaged people with odd holes in their memories - names of mammals, proper nouns etc - my point being that perhaps the brain/language-unit is set up to store things in defined categories?

Yes, when I was using memory palaces for Korean I was using thematic "palaces" so for example a public library building for words like: book, desk, study, pen, etc. I had a market for words like: Pineapple, banana, orange, lettuce, etc. It definitely works, but I only have a sample size of one. I am not certain that using thematic memory places helped me any more than anki and repetition. It is a good experiment, I should probably try to set something up. For example, I could put 50 words on some theme into an anki deck (e.g. Vegetables), and 50 words of a different thing (e.g. Insects) into a memory palace and then review them for the same amount of time for 2 weeks and see which ones I can remember more of. My guess is that I will remember more of the MP than anki, because MP are really great for create of an ordered list. Whereas anki would be drilling the words in individually in a more or less random order.

My main problem with MP or anki is learning words individually doesn't really help me much when I come to use them, so active practice tends to help me more, which is why I do so many language exchanges. They force me to actively use the words and phrases I've learning, and to try to create new sentences based on the structures and vocabulary I've studied.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Mon Sep 05, 2022 3:12 pm

Mandarin
I keep getting requests for Mandarin exchanges. I've got three people now, and I'm not really studying, so this is already a problem. Still, I don't suppose they are all that bothered by getting a full hour of English practice in. I bought that "Memorizing the Hanzi" book... meh.

Korean
I have paid out a lot of money for lessons and I don't feel that I'm getting anywhere. This is mostly because my lazy arse isn't working hard enough, and I'm not using the language.


Must work harder!

I honestly don't know if I will ever be able to string together a sentence in Korean.

Italian
Have not read any more of my books, must work harder! I have had a couple of language exchanges, but nothing exciting to report.

French
All the French people bailed on me this week.

General Stuff
I am so crap at studying!! I attempted Iversen's wordlist thing in Korean, but abandoned it after only doing 1/9th of a page. I honestly don't know why I put myself through all this language learning rubbish, I don't like people anyway! So what is the point of learning a new language to talk to people?

Oh, and Anki has become a torture machine again. :evil:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby luke » Mon Sep 05, 2022 3:26 pm

rdearman wrote:I honestly don't know why I put myself through all this language learning rubbish, I don't like people anyway! So what is the point of learning a new language to talk to people?

You have all the makings of a standup comedian and bring joy to those around you.
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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Mon Sep 05, 2022 3:44 pm

luke wrote:
rdearman wrote:I honestly don't know why I put myself through all this language learning rubbish, I don't like people anyway! So what is the point of learning a new language to talk to people?

You have all the makings of a standup comedian and bring joy to those around you.

Perhaps... but could I do standup in a Korean bar, in Korean?
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby alaart » Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:58 pm

Arrrrgghhhhhhh! I think I must be brutal and tell the truth. You get everything wrong! Your prosody is wrong, you speak English like you would Mandarin, your stress is all over the place, your accent is so thick I can't understand anything you say. It doesn't matter if you can read everything, or listen to difficult podcasts, you cannot make yourself intelligible to a native speaker, which means you can't speak.


I agree Mandarin speakers have a really bad English accent (it's also really bad in German). I too think stress is the main reason. I can detect a wrong vowel or wrong r or something like that, but if the stress is wrong I'm totally out.

I honestly don't know if I will ever be able to string together a sentence in Korean.

Speaking is hard for you, I remember. For me it's the only thing I am good at :lol: - I'd still advice you to speak, like I explained earlier by constructing a short story about your day. ("Today I went to the supermarket") - you can even use google translate and start with that.

a) Start with a prepared sentence. Construct it on your own if you can, with a dictionary and basic verb conjugation - or maybe even with a translator.
b) let the speaking partner confirm if you could be understood. If not, why not?
c) Let the speaking partner speak the correct sentence
d) repeat the correct sentence (and add it to Anki later)

In the next conversation (with another partner, or with the same) - speak the same sentence again to the new speaking partner. You can then start to exchange elements.
("Today I went to the supermarket") -> ("Today my wife went to the supermarket") -> ("Today my wife went to the bank")

And slowly like that the expressions grow, and after a couple of weeks you can speak freely within the limit of the patterns and sentences you practiced. And slowly but surely it will grow more, until it will be possible to speak freely. I really guarantee it, I just did the same thing in Tagalog, which I studied for 3 weeks (around 1 hour per day) - and I could have a simple conversations with a vocabulary of maybe just 300 words. (but then I was sick for 10 days and busy, and lost it quickly, but still the ability to produce a sentence is absolutely possible even at a beginner level).
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby Querneus » Thu Sep 08, 2022 2:51 pm

rdearman wrote:
luke wrote:
rdearman wrote:I honestly don't know why I put myself through all this language learning rubbish, I don't like people anyway! So what is the point of learning a new language to talk to people?

You have all the makings of a standup comedian and bring joy to those around you.

Perhaps... but could I do standup in a Korean bar, in Korean?

I mean, your blog is practically the only one I read with consistency, and the main reason is all the comedy. You seem to struggle but have a fair bit of fun along the way, even when complaining. It's different when someone struggles and much of what they do in their log is just vent a tired frustration...
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby kujichagulia » Fri Sep 09, 2022 3:02 am

Querneus wrote:I mean, your blog is practically the only one I read with consistency, and the main reason is all the comedy. You seem to struggle but have a fair bit of fun along the way, even when complaining. It's different when someone struggles and much of what they do in their log is just vent a tired frustration...

Hey... I resemble that! :lol:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:19 pm

Mandarin
Nothing to report here, I cancelled all my Mandarin language exchanges for the week because I had a lot of things going on. I've also parked any work on memorisation of Hanzi or doing my spoon-fed Chinese anki deck. This is all due to a combination of a lack of time and lack of interest.

Korean
I continue to do at least 30 minutes per day in Korean, although I am getting burned out on it. Two language exchanges in Korean. Reading Korean grammar book and trying to hammer vocabulary into my brain.

This week I decided to start making sentences. So when something pops up in Anki I try to make a sentence using that word. Obviously the sentences are super basic and normally grammatically incorrect.

I should be reading, but I'm not.

Italian
I completed about half of the little prince book and then stopped because it bores me. I'll grab it and do the rest of it this week since I need to get back on track and stopping has slowed down my average pages. I'll need to recalculate and figure out how many pages I need to read to get this done by the end of the year.

French
I had to postpone one LE because I had a dentist appointment. The other one was a no-show. So, no French this week either.

General Stuff
Due to my general lack of interest in languages lately, I've been working more on electronics. The cost of electricity is skyrocketing, so I decided that I'd run my 4 Raspberry Pi machines on solar power. So I've ordered batteries, buck converters, solar panels, charge controllers, etc. and I'm setting it all up. The battery will do 4 raspberry PIs on an average load for about 15 hours, so even in the sunlight deficient UK in winter I should be OK. We'll see. I've also 3d printed a small wind turbine and the ICs and relays to create my own turbine charge converter. Don't know if it will work, but fun to mess around with.

Of course the power consumption of a Raspberry is very small, so even powering 4 of them it will be 4-5 years for a return on investment. But I'm doing it more for the knowledge than the savings. :ugeek:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Mon Sep 19, 2022 10:20 am

Mandarin
Nothing to report for Mandarin. I skipped all the LE's I had scheduled because I had interviews or dentist appointments.

Korean
As normal most of my focus is on Korean. I watch a ton of films, almost 155 as I write this, since the start of the super challenge. One conclusion that I have come to is that "immersion" with subtitles is a complete waste of time. I'm just reading in English for a couple of hours each night. So I think I need to just start watching a short news broadcast each day from a Korean TV station. This would probably be more useful.

I need to buckle down and READ!!! So with this in mind, I'm setting myself some targets for reading in Korean. I think if I can work on reading, then I'll start to recognise the words in Hangul when I see them. This would help to retain the words, because when I'm using my anki decks, I rarely recognise the word until I sound it out to "hear it" in my head.

I have asked my Korean LE partners to do 10 minutes with me only in Korean. Basically force myself to use what little I know. At the moment they ask me a question in Korean and I try to a) understand what they said b) make a simple reply. I would like to say this is going well, but honestly I don't know squat. Almost a year of learning, and I'm still useless. I should have picked an easier hobby, something a little more fun like... oh.. I don't know... Marathon des sables, or the Desert Ultra. Or just train for something cool.

Enough fantasising about all those easy hobbies people have, I need to get back to learning Korean. :evil:

Italian
I was planning to complete a bunch of my Italian books, but I decided to get a bit more organised. After putting all the books and the page count into a spreadsheet, I discovered that I was mistaken about the total page count and I had a couple of hundred more pages than I thought. So it turns out that I need to average about 32 pages per day if I want to be done by New Year. The week and a bit of procrastination hasn't helped to bring this number down. :oops:

French
Still no French people available. So I have done nothing.

General Stuff
I mentioned once before that I was looking at mnemonics to help with language learning and I've been trying to practice my retention. I have a log on another forum if you want to read about those failures instead of these failures. But one of the things I have managed to memorise is a couple of poems by Robert Frost. It isn't that difficult, and I thought I might try to memorise a Korean poem, so I'm going to ask some of my LE partners if they know any short poems in Korean. (Feel free to chip in if you know any).

Recently, something popped up in my RSS feeds (yes, I am that old) about the number of books people are likely to read before they die. If I were to go hard core and live to the statistical average age, then I'm probably only going to get through about 2500 books. I have more than double that number of books in my calibre library. So I figured I had better get off my backside and get cracking. So I created a reading log spreadsheet and input the first 50 books I needed to get through. These are just the physical books I have in my house, and I haven't even started on the electronic books. So having identified the enemy and set a target, I just need to start working my way through them all.

Oh, swift update on the solar power thing. The Raspberry Pi's drain the battery faster than the solar panel can recharge. A combination of bad location for a solar panel in my house and a low amount of sunlight generally in the UK. I have 3D printed a wind turbine, and I'm looking at soldering up my own charge controller (solar panel ones will not work, since they can't dump extra load).
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