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

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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Feb 16, 2023 11:28 pm

Italian
Still reading my book, but I've slowed down to about a page every couple of days. Too much other stuff going on. I had 4 language exchanges in Italian.

French
I did 8 language exchanges in French, and I have been doing a lot of text based WhatsApp chats as well.

Korean
5 language exchanges in Korean. I'm using these to try and practice speaking for at least 4–5 minutes. But mainly they are an opportunity for me to ask questions about the grammar and other questions which pop-up when I'm reviewing old lessons or listening to IYAGI podcasts. My newest LE partners are very impressed with my reading and writing. I don't see why, since I have to sound out every letter like a 5-year-old, and my vocabulary is almost non-existent. But whatever. I'm watching a load of K-Dramas still, but now I'm really trying to focus on picking out words and phrases I know.

General Stuff
I did a LE in Mandarin, but really this was just to help out the lady who contacted me, and we spoke in English. I've got zero interest in Mandarin at the moment. I don't have time for that.

I have gone too far over to the side of language exchanges, and I need to scale them back some. But because the French and Italian ones are easy, I seem to be using them as a Korean avoidance strategy.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Feb 23, 2023 5:33 pm

Italian
A couple of language exchanges. But I've more or less stopped reading my book in Italian. I like to kid myself that it is because I don't have time, but actually it is more because I don't like this book. So I think I'm just going to bin it. I was looking at my 17 books to read in Italian mini-challeange and looking at the remaining books. Honestly, I don't like most of them, so I'm probably just going to give them away and not bother reading them. Life is too short to read books you don't like just for language practice. I can do what I want in Italian, which is speaking to people, so I don't really have any incentive to read them.

French
A few exchanges in French, I honestly stopped counting them. A number of people were no-shows, and I've cancelled anything anyone wanted to do aft 5pm my time.

Korean
Again, almost all my focus is on Korean. But the initial wave of enthusiasm for doing Ari's Chinesepod thing for Korean has hit a motivation rock and sank. I did it for a couple of days and then stopped.

Meanwhile, I have been steadily working on reviewing my old lessons and writing up the notes on them. I try to do 3–4 pages per day, which takes 1–2 hours typically. I note down any questions I have or things I sort of remember but want more clarification, and I ask these questions in my conversation exchanges with Korean natives. This tends to work well because it allows them to talk about a subject they know (Korean) in English. They help me with pronunciation and understanding grammar. This isn't helping me gain any fluency in speaking.

One lady has however just completed her master’s degree in teaching Korean and is super happy to help me to learn Korean. So she is giving me some weekly lessons in speaking. Most of the time it is a little simple for me, because I am kind of a strange false beginner type of scenario.

I realise that I need to work on speaking, but I'm finding it difficult to find a way that I'll stick with and enjoy. I am still watching a ton of K-dramas, but always with subtitles because I watch with my wife. I'm getting much better at picking out words and phrases which I know.

General Stuff
Not much else to say.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Mar 02, 2023 3:25 pm

Italian
Wouldn't it be nice if I ever said something different? But no, this week is the same. Couple of language exchanges and little bits of reading. I've decided to just grit my teeth and continue to read this current Italian book, even though I don't like it much. I figure I only have another ~125 pages, and it is a hell of a lot smaller than that absolute pig of a book by Stendhal. I'm missing the days when I read the Hardy Boys and Crime fiction. Literature sucks.

French
Lots and lots of language exchanges in French. I don't know why. Seems to have just snowballed, and I appear to have hit upon a bunch of people that are dedicated.

Korean
Korean focused. I'm actually spending a significant amount of time working on my lesson reviews. I was getting a lot more information at the time than I really processed. So although my speaking is still non-existent, I am getting a lot of exposure to writing and words. I have an Agatha Christie story on the go inside a LWT instance on my computer. I try to read a paragraph each day at least. Then I stick this paragraph into my OpenTTS instance and listen to it in Korean.

I build up a lot of questions doing this, and I write them all out and query each of my language exchange partners to try and get them to explain anything I've not figured out, or I'm unsure of. I'm starting to make some more sentences during the exchanges, and I'm working with someone to create a simple "Language Island" in Korean for describing myself and my history.

I've watched the equivalent of 273.6 films since the start of the super challenge. None of which appear to help me with understanding spoken Korean.

General Stuff
Had a "language Exchange" in Mandarin today. But we just spoke in English because I really don't have time for Mandarin right now.

Still trying to read books, but honestly the pace has slowed down considerably. I'm almost halfway through Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid which is a bloody big book. Also on the go are the afore mentioned Italian book, a SciFi classic called "Star Maker", "A biography of the worlds most famous equation, E=mc2", "벙어리 목격자 (Dumb Witness)" by Agatha Christie, "Intermediate Korean Grammar", and "Becoming a better programmer". There are a couple of others, but I forget the titles. I've added a scorebar to my signature if I remember to update it. :)



I've only completed 12 books this year, and we're already at the end of the 1st quarter. So my target of reading 125 books per year is looking pretty shaky at the moment.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Mar 09, 2023 11:45 am

Italian
Only one language exchange this week in Italian, still trying to force myself to read and complete this books.

French
Couple of language exchanges in French

Korean
Three language exchanges this week. I had one person drop out this week because they are moving.

Working my way through my old lessons is actually very good for me. It seems to help because although I learned it once, memory fades, so redoing everything is bringing it all back, and it has allowed me to ask questions which I didn't think of at the time. I find it is easier to explore a single topic, like numbers for example, with a LE Partner. As I've watched more and more k-dramas, I link things to lessons and generate better questions.

One of the exercises which my LE Partner has to do for her school is to watch a news clip in English, then summarise it. I think this might be a good exercise for me. I can't understand spoken Korean, other than small phrases or the occasional word. But KBS News do short clips of news, and they have a transcript of the broadcast in Korean. So I can watch it, see how much I can glean, then translate all the words, and then watch it again. One clip per day should be sufficient, they are only 2–3 minutes long, but it will take me ages to translate and understand. So this is sort of like the Podcast method, but with much shorter audio.

I have decided that I also need to get back to diary writing. If nothing else, to help me with dates and numbers. But this time I can write the summary of what I watched there. I would only be aiming for 2-3 sentences!

I found another use for the ChatGPT AI thing. I had it write me a couple of "Islands" in Korean. Basic stuff about me, my family, my favourite books, etc. And the reasons I want to learn Korean. I have some money left on my iTalki account, so I plan to use this up by having community teachers refine the text and then help me drill the pronunciation, etc.

I have also had ChatGPT do literal translations of Korean text but putting the English word in brackets. Like this:
저는 (I) 다른 (other) 나라에 (country) 가면 (go) 언어를 (language) 몰라서 (not know) 문제가 (problem) 생긴 (occur) 적이 (time) 있었습니다 (have).

General Stuff
I've boosted my reading a little. It is simpler to read on a Kindle in bed at night. Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid I'm still trudging through, slowly but surely. Not much else to report, but I will be glad to be done with the Italian book and the GEB book.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Wed Mar 15, 2023 7:20 pm

Buckle your seatbelts for another boring update!

Italian
Couple of language exchanges and plodding through a rubbish book.

French
A couple of French language exchanges got cancelled, and a couple were successful. BTW, I think I have actually met the only French person in the world who doesn't like cheese!

Korean
This is my focus as per usual. But not a lot of interesting stuff to report. I am doing the same thing, reviewing and transcribing all my old lessons. Watching K-Dramas or YT channels. I had my "Islands" checked and recorded by a native speaker. Now, this is interesting. This particular Korean native is actually a YouTube influencer who is pretty famous in Korea (apparently) and has almost 100k subscribers. You might not be impressed, but I've only got about 250 subscribers and I thought I was rocking it. :)

Her English is bloody amazing, and honestly it would take you awhile to figure out she isn't Canadian, or American, but you probably wouldn't immediately pick her out as a self-study Korean learner. Anyway, works out great for me since she recorded all my islands, and I've put them into WorkAudioBook and made subtitles, so I could follow along by reading as well. I'm not going to lie, it is still difficult for me to hammer things into my tired old grey matter, but I'm working on it.

I also loaded all three of these islands into my LWT instance so that I could go through each one word-by-word. This is way more useful than fighting with ChatGPT to try and get it to do transliteration properly.

I'm trying to keep on top of the language exchanges, although some are more useful than others. This is of course my fault because I need to force myself to speak. Or at least attempt to speak. Still, they are very useful when I have built up some questions based on my lesson review. I need to work on my listening skills, since they are non-existent. I've got five Korean exchanges scheduled for this week, and I've completed 4 of them so far.

I've downloaded two more anki decks for Korean. These are sort of like the Spoon-Fed Chinese deck which show sentences and grammar explanations of the sentences. They start out easy and get more difficult. I found the Spoon-Fed Chinese deck to be really helpful, so I'm hoping these will also be useful for me.

General Stuff
Still reading, but it has slowed down significantly from the levels of late last year. Still, even though I'm not reading as fast, I'm still working my way through them. I'm averaging 10-12 language exchanges per week, and these are a significant time sink, I might need to stop some of the French, and all the Chinese. I have been presently surprised how much of the Mandarin I learned, I have retained.

I've gone back to working with memory palaces and memorising poetry and assorted facts. I find it is useful to just be able to review things in your head when you're driving along with nothing else to do, or stuck in the dentist chair, or whatever.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:19 am

rdearman wrote:French
A couple of French language exchanges got cancelled, and a couple were successful. BTW, I think I have actually met the only French person in the world who doesn't like cheese!
An imposter!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:23 am

DaveAgain wrote:
rdearman wrote:French
A couple of French language exchanges got cancelled, and a couple were successful. BTW, I think I have actually met the only French person in the world who doesn't like cheese!
An imposter!

No she is French, but I think they are going to deport her.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Mar 16, 2023 12:23 pm

rdearman wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:
rdearman wrote:French
A couple of French language exchanges got cancelled, and a couple were successful. BTW, I think I have actually met the only French person in the world who doesn't like cheese!
An imposter!

No she is French, but I think they are going to deport her.


Do you think you could deport her to my local area? I mean they must be utterly disgusted with her, best to send her to the other side of the world (for her own safety, of course)!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:54 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:
rdearman wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:
rdearman wrote:French
A couple of French language exchanges got cancelled, and a couple were successful. BTW, I think I have actually met the only French person in the world who doesn't like cheese!
An imposter!

No she is French, but I think they are going to deport her.


Do you think you could deport her to my local area? I mean they must be utterly disgusted with her, best to send her to the other side of the world (for her own safety, of course)!

I can tell her that you are willing to put her put, but your wife might object to the 22 year old French woman moving in. :|
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Mar 16, 2023 8:58 pm

rdearman wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:
rdearman wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:
rdearman wrote:French
A couple of French language exchanges got cancelled, and a couple were successful. BTW, I think I have actually met the only French person in the world who doesn't like cheese!
An imposter!

No she is French, but I think they are going to deport her.


Do you think you could deport her to my local area? I mean they must be utterly disgusted with her, best to send her to the other side of the world (for her own safety, of course)!

I can tell her that you are willing to put her put, but your wife might object to the 22 year old French woman moving in. :|


I really don't see why she'd object... people are just odd nowadays. I was only trying to ummm... ehhh... help? :?
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