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

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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:30 pm

I posted another video for the FAQ yesterday (nobody ever clicks the subscribe or the bell, but I say it here and the views double). :lol: Go subscribe please, I want to get to 1024 subscribers. (Computer Geeks will understand why, but first I need to get to 256 !)

Korean Update:
My Korean teacher isn't so impressed with me any more. :cry:

This is because I am struggling to memorize vocabulary. But he insisted that I stopped writing a romanized phonic sound below the word, since Korean words are phonic already, so I should be able to just read the word. So I got a hand slapping, and I stopped writing what each word "sounds like" in English alphabet below the word. The problem however is I only remembered about 11 of the 15 words he gave me yesterday with pronunciation. So I need some method of sounding out the word quickly, more on that later.

I have previously been creating my own quizzes to write out the phrases and grammar points he is teaching me, like this:
writings.png

So this is fine, and I get some practice writing. But it doesn't necessarily help me to remember the pronunciation of the words, whereas writing the Romanization did help me. So I decided to change tactics a little and go back to writing and memorisation like I used to do for Chinese Hanzi. I put them into a spreadsheet with the words in Greyscale, and then I write over them, while saying the word out loud, over and over. Now for Hanzi this is important because the way the character looks and what it sounds like are not connected. But Korean is an alphabetic system, so the letters represent sounds and I should be able to sound the words out.

mykoreanwritting.jpg


So hopefully you can see at the bottom Japan in English, followed by the Korean (not in Greyscale) followed by some greyscale Korean which I write over and practice. But in addition I'm reading the Korean phonically as I write it. [ ㅅ (s) ] for example, sound it out. So this is helping me with both word recognition and with pronunciation. What I am doing is going to Google translate and listening to the pronunciation, a few times, then I keep repeating it aloud as I write down the word multiple times. A mixture of memory palaces and writing out the words ad-infinitum seems to be getting it into my head slowly but surely.

I also installed a Korean keyboard on my Linux Mint desktop, and I have to say it was the easiest keyboard change I have ever done on a Linux system. They have definitely improved the user experience for adding languages and keyboard mappings. Although I did have to print out a image of a Korean keyboard and blue tack it to the wall beside me, so I know which key is which.

French Update:
I honestly haven't read a single page of my French novel this week. Work and Korean are sucking up a lot of my time. I'm still speaking to my French friend each week, although last week she was away to some conference in Marseille, so we didn't talk.

Italian Update:
I have done absolutely nothing with Italian for probably 2-3 months other than a weekly conversation (I have another one tonight). Strangely, my conversational abilities seemed to have improved according to my exchange partner. Go figure. :?

Mandarin Update:
So this has been basically parked for a long time, but I have subscribed to a couple of cooking channels and one "influencer" in Chinese on YT, and so I often listen to some short videos in Mandarin. I need to start scheduling a chat with my Chinese friend. But not a lot of point while I am focusing on Korean.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Le Baron » Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:55 pm

rdearman wrote:Strangely, my conversational abilities seemed to have improved according to my exchange partner. Go figure. :?

It makes perfect sense to me. Whenever I drop trying to learn and memorise stuff for a while, I get to actively using (exercising) what I have learned or know up to now. Learning and doing at the same time doesn't always deliver the goods.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Carmody » Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:49 pm

Congratulations on all the good work!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Le Baron » Wed Nov 10, 2021 8:28 pm

I think I have something of interest to you Mr. rdearman. I mean in terms of the French reading. I thought perhaps it would be better to post here rather than that reading thread.

There's a magazine called Système D (maybe you've heard of it?). It dates from the 1920s and is still current (https://www.systemed.fr/). It covers what modern parlance calls 'hacks' in the sense of finding ingenious and useful solutions to things for people good with their hands and brain, now mostly just a DIY magazine. The 'D' is the word débrouiller (du débrouillard), which I don't need to define for you.

At the archive there are various examples from several time periods. There are also single-volume magazines covering one topic and I enjoyed reading this one from 1968 about constructing 'wind turbines' for various uses.
https://archive.org/details/14-eolienne ... 9/mode/1up

This copy from 1925 is largely centred around the then super new and hip hobby of wireless. There are lots of amusing illustrations of flappers driving out to the country with their wireless sets, wrapping the antenna wire around a tree trunk and dancing in the open air :lol: . There are some things like building a microphone from a razor blade or a capacitor from a tobacco pipe. 8-) I doubt some of these things could or would be constructed, but they are interesting reading and a far cry from the navel-gazing French novel.
https://archive.org/details/le-sans-fil ... d/mode/1up
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:14 pm

Le Baron wrote:I think I have something of interest to you Mr. rdearman. I mean in terms of the French reading. I thought perhaps it would be better to post here rather than that reading thread.

There's a magazine called Système D (maybe you've heard of it?). It dates from the 1920s and is still current (https://www.systemed.fr/). It covers what modern parlance calls 'hacks' in the sense of finding ingenious and useful solutions to things for people good with their hands and brain, now mostly just a DIY magazine. The 'D' is the word débrouiller (du débrouillard), which I don't need to define for you.

At the archive there are various examples from several time periods. There are also single-volume magazines covering one topic and I enjoyed reading this one from 1968 about constructing 'wind turbines' for various uses.
https://archive.org/details/14-eolienne ... 9/mode/1up

This copy from 1925 is largely centred around the then super new and hip hobby of wireless. There are lots of amusing illustrations of flappers driving out to the country with their wireless sets, wrapping the antenna wire around a tree trunk and dancing in the open air :lol: . There are some things like building a microphone from a razor blade or a capacitor from a tobacco pipe. 8-) I doubt some of these things could or would be constructed, but they are interesting reading and a far cry from the navel-gazing French novel.
https://archive.org/details/le-sans-fil ... d/mode/1up

This does look interesting! I wonder if they have anything about boat building....

EDIT: Seems to be a lot of them available.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:28 pm



French Reading
Update on my book reading. I've managed to get halfway through this book. The level of unknown words is really very high. To the point that in reality I shouldn't be reading it. There are some paragraphs where I'm literally underlining every other word as unknown. It is probably a good thing I'm reading it intensively because I don't think I could do it any other way. I was thinking that I should really continue this book intensively and start another easier book extensively. But the problem is I need to devote time to Korean. After my trip I might drop Korean, or continue to focus on it, but I still have the objective of completing all these French books and the Italian ones as well.

Korean

I was thinking today that if I had tried to learn Korean before Mandarin, I would be moaning all the time about how hard it is and the alphabet being all strange and confusing. But, after spending a lot of time trying to memorize Hanzi characters the 40 characters of the Korean alphabet are a doddle, and you can just sound the words out, you don't have to remember everything. I am actually enjoying the Korean learning. It helps to have an actual tutor instead of trying to prise it into my brain by myself. Which is very much like trying to force a camel through the eye of a needle.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:40 pm

rdearman wrote:The level of unknown words is really very high. To the point that in reality I shouldn't be reading it. There are some paragraphs where I'm literally underlining every other word as unknown. It is probably a good think I'm reading it intensively because I don't think I could do it any other way. I was thinking that I should really continue this book intensively and start another easier book extensively.
Is there a pattern to the unknowns? I remember reading the Swiss Family Robinson and being confronted by a barrage of plant/animal names I didn't know.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:45 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
rdearman wrote:The level of unknown words is really very high. To the point that in reality I shouldn't be reading it. There are some paragraphs where I'm literally underlining every other word as unknown. It is probably a good think I'm reading it intensively because I don't think I could do it any other way. I was thinking that I should really continue this book intensively and start another easier book extensively.
Is there a pattern to the unknowns? I remember reading the Swiss Family Robinson and being confronted by a barrage of plant/animal names I didn't know.

Yeah, they are mostly political or tree related, with the odd bit of slang thrown in for good measure.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Carmody » Wed Nov 17, 2021 7:08 pm

Am I right in thinking that if we are not struggling, we are not learning.....?
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby SpanishInput » Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:49 pm

rdearman wrote:I posted another video for the FAQ yesterday (nobody ever clicks the subscribe or the bell, but I say it here and the views double). :lol: Go subscribe please, I want to get to 1024 subscribers. (Computer Geeks will understand why, but first I need to get to 256 !)

Hi, Rick. I'm by no means an expert on "how to get subscribers", but I do know that if your video title includes a search term that appears on the graph in Google Trends, you have a chance to reach more people. Especially if the search term is a question for which nobodoy else has given a good answer yet.

rdearman wrote:I also installed a Korean keyboard on my Linux Mint desktop

Now I understand why you don't use Chrome. I guess it's not easily available on Linux distros? Sadly, add-on developers have flocked to Chrome and Firefox doesn't get as many cool add-ons these days. But I guess (this is a wild guess) that if you find a Chromium-based browser maybe you could install Chrome add-ons. Such is the case with Edge on Windows 10.


rdearman wrote:I have subscribed to a couple of cooking channels and one "influencer" in Chinese on YT

For Mandarin, 李永乐老师 comes to mind. He's a teacher who has become famous for explaining science and economy, and almost all his latest videos have accurate subtitles in both simplified and traditional Chinese. You'll feel like you have been transported to a Chinese college classroom.
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