Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, bits of French)

[golyplot]

German word order is very similar to English. It's not like Japanese.

The difference between German and English is just a few minor changes, such as "conjugated verb goes at the end of subordinate and relative clauses", "participles go at the end", "main verb is second", "time, manner, place", etc. But apart from sometimes moving the verbs around, German sentence structure is near identical to English. Meanwhile in Japanese, not only is the word order completely backwards, you're often not even phrasing things in remotely the same way.


English: This is the air conditioner I bought at the department store last week
German: This is the air conditioner that I last week at the department store bought have
Japanese: This last week department store at bought air conditioner is

[garyb]

I know the word order in German can be wildly different, so I'd be interested to hear how your experience goes. Japanese is kind of "backwards" compared to English, so the cards often have mismatched subtitles, making them somewhat unusable unless you take the time to go back and edit them, which kind of negates the purpose of Migaku, I feel.

From my experience so far (not only from playing around with Migaku yesterday, but also from watching various YouTube and Netflix videos with Language Reactor dual subtitles recently) is that such mismatches do sometimes happen, usually with longer sentences where the phrasing is a bit different, but they aren't really the norm and in most cases they do match. Especially on Netflix. Which is enough for my purposes. I'll see how it goes in the longer term though.

I do see a lot more mismatches when using auto-generated YouTube subtitles, but I wouldn't ever make cards from these since they tend to have errors and lack capitalisation and punctuation; they can just be a handy better-than-nothing tool for videos that are hard to understand and don't have proper subs.

[emk]

I know the word order in German can be wildly different, so I'd be interested to hear how your experience goes. Japanese is kind of "backwards" compared to English, so the cards often have mismatched subtitles, making them somewhat unusable unless you take the time to go back and edit them, which kind of negates the purpose of Migaku, I feel.

From my experience so far (not only from playing around with Migaku yesterday, but also from watching various YouTube and Netflix videos with Language Reactor dual subtitles recently) is that such mismatches do sometimes happen, usually with longer sentences where the phrasing is a bit different, but they aren't really the norm and in most cases they do match. Especially on Netflix. Which is enough for my purposes. I'll see how it goes in the longer term though.

Migaku's card generator has a bunch of AI-powered options that seemed to work fairly well when I tried them. I think it can re-generate translations and even add explanations using its language model?

I'm experimenting with using GPT-3.5-Turbo to automatically generate the backs of cards, including translations and explanations for interesting expressions. Even with a relatively weak model like 3.5-Turbo, this produces pretty decent results. In fact, I may even prefer the AI-generated translations (from L2→L1) over human-prepared parallel texts—the AI translations tend to be more literal. So the Migaku options should work fine.

(YouTube's automatic captions, unfortunately, are garbage. Whisper's speech-to-text produces cleaner and more grammatical results. If you use it on the kind of clear audio that everyone loves around B1/B2, it has a low error rate for Spanish and French. The kind of audio that's still problematic at C1/C2 is a lot more hit-or-miss with Whisper.)

I really think the most promising story for making cards is Migaku + Netflix. Language Reactor + YouTube is fine for casual viewing, but I don't trust it enough to put it on cards.

[garyb]

I've been using Migaku for German and Spanish, and so far so good. It's rough around the edges but mostly does what it's supposed to and mismatching subs have rarely been an issue so far. I have read that people are doing the same thing (for Japanese at least) with free and open-source tools (asbplayer, which seems to do quite the same thing as Language Reactor, and captures cards like Mikagu) plus Yomitan and Anki. That seems worth looking into, since using a subscription service always has risks (Memrise anyone?) and the cost adds up, although I can't imagine the user experience would be any less clunky.

I went to a friend's place for a movie night, and it turned out he had a good selection of Italian, Spanish, and Japanese films... it's almost as if he had known I was coming We opted for a Japanese one, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, which was quite a wild ride. I think I liked it! I learnt a couple of valuable facts about Japanese writing: the character for "prisoner" is 囚 (always nice when they look like the thing they represent!), and if you're about to die and you want to write the murderer's name in blood on another person's arm, Katakana is the best choice of script. I sure wouldn't want to be messing around with Kanji strokes in that situation, and even some Hiragana characters are a little too intricate for the medium.

On a more serious note, one of the myths I often hear amongst Japanese learners is that "nobody actually uses the second-person pronoun anata", but I heard it lots in that film in various situations: amongst people who knew each other and who didn't, different levels of formality, etc. Maybe usage has changed since 1972, since I don't hear it as commonly in the other media I'm consuming, but I think it's just one of these exaggerations to compensate for learners overusing it as a direct translation of "you" and sounding awkward. I'd certainly be careful with it and stick to addressing people by their name until I have a good understanding the subtleties.

I'm very close to finishing WaniKani level 7. Apart from the confusing characters I mentioned, it's been pretty easy going and aside from the week in Spain I've kept up a pace of 10 lessons per day without much trouble, while on previous levels I stuck to 5 unless it was a day when my load was particularly light or the lessons were particularly easy.

Dinner with Italian friends on Saturday, so I did a bit more Italian listening in preparation and started yet another Netflix series, Generazione 56k. I'm certainly getting my money's worth so far!

I finally had a free day yesterday so I caught up on all my languages. Finished Genki workbook lesson 9; just the reading and writing part to do now. Watched a few episodes of Liebes Kind and Idhún. I had forgotten about the part in the latter where the antagonist becomes a pop star; top young-adult silliness! Not a bad thing after Liebes Kind, which is quite serious and disturbing. On a whim I picked up Final Fantasy 7 in German again after a few months, and it's become a little more comprehensible. It's a little less addictive than Yakuza, which is a good thing for keeping up a good routine! And a bit of Spanish Skyrim too, which so far is has a good balance of being absorbing enough but not so much that I can't put it down.

Last night I started watching Suzume, which had been on my list ever since I went to a double bill last year (pre-Japanese-learning) of Your Name and Weathering with You, which I had mixed feelings on but liked overall. So far it confirms my generalisation of anime being easier than live action: compared to Erased the language is simpler and there are more visual cues.

And today I went to the gym and ended up in a French conversation in the sauna.

[golyplot]

if you're about to die and you want to write the murderer's name in blood on another person's arm, Katakana is the best choice of script. I sure wouldn't want to be messing around with Kanji strokes in that situation, and even some Hiragana characters are a little too intricate for the medium.

In Ace Attorney, two out of the three "dying messages" use kanji, but then again those were all faked as well. On the bright side, using kanji gives you the opportunity to use the wrong kanji, thus proving the message to be fake.

[garyb]

Should I do a Super Challenge?

I mostly lost interest in the various forum challenges years ago because I didn't really see much point in them and generally I'm not a big fan of long-term planning or goal-setting or trying to quantify the fairly-unquantifiable process of learning a language. But... I did do a Super Challenge in Italian back in the day and I feel that it was beneficial: it pushed me to find and consume more media than I perhaps would have otherwise, and that media did play a big part in taking my Italian comprehension to a good level as well as diving more into the culture. Tracking the numbers did motivate me, too.

That was in the earlier days when a film was just a film and a book was just a book, but if I remember well I decided to modify the challenge to make the reading part more manageable; maybe I halved it? I think I also added in something about speaking hours. I'd need to dig out my old logs. I'm all for the more recent rules about units being 90 minutes of listening and 50 pages, but they do make the tracking a little harder especially if you're counting podcasts and YouTube etc. too.

Something like this could give me the push I need to finally get my Spanish and/or German out of the respective intermediate and beginner holes that they've languished in for far too long. And since I've already been increasing my input recently, it wouldn't be a huge extra commitment or change of plans; I even said a few posts ago that I think the main thing my Spanish needs is just a few hundred more hours of input.

I don't know if I'd do it in just one of these languages (and if so, which?) or I'd do half-and-half. I'd say that at the moment they have more or less equal priority. Japanese is still the language I'm spending the most time on these days, but it's far too early to even consider an SC in that while I think it could really pay off in the other languages. Spanish would be the faster and easier option since my level is higher and my listening is more extensive, but German could be the more rewarding one since I could see a more noticeable increase in level.

I suppose I've talked myself into it now!

[jeffers]

I'm all for the more recent rules about units being 90 minutes of listening and 50 pages, but they do make the tracking a little harder especially if you're counting podcasts and YouTube etc. too.

I've been tracking my reading and listening using a spreadsheet with a column for minutes or pages, and a running total at the top.

[iguanamon]

Reading a lot and listening a lot are a huge boost to bringing a language past the intermediate plateau. When I was learning Portuguese, I'd do my morning walk listening to magazine type radio podcasts in Portuguese for 45 minutes or so... every day. I'd have a book on the go and watch a tv series with a lot of episodes. I never counted pages or hours, because, I didn't need or want to do that. It helped me tremendously and definitely took me over the hump so to speak.

Now, my problem is adding a new language into that mix. I want to keep what I have in Spanish; Portuguese; Djudeo-espanyol; the Creoles; and improve my Catalan. It's hard to juggle that many languages. I don't think, given my situation, I could realistically do a super challenge split between two languages, and learn two languages to boot, and gain that much from the process. Of course, we all want to do just that because, languages are cool. It's great to travel abroad and get that much more out of the trip because you can speak and understand the language... but... I can't learn them all.

That's just me. I've read your log for years and seen your trials and tribulations... and your evolution as a learner. Only you can make that decision about what to do. Whatever you decide, I'll hang around and follow your journey as I have been doing over these years. I wish you continued success.

[garyb]

I don't think, given my situation, I could realistically do a super challenge split between two languages, and learn two languages to boot, and gain that much from the process. Of course, we all want to do just that because, languages are cool. It's great to travel abroad and get that much more out of the trip because you can speak and understand the language... but... I can't learn them all.

That's a fair point and I think that for me the elephant in the room is that currently I'm actively working on three languages, and more or less managing it because the stars are currently aligned such that I have the time, the motivation, and the energy, but I know from past experience that it's a delicate balance and it won't last forever. I go through phases with my interests, and life happens. The risk with challenges like these, and a reason I've mostly avoided them, is that I over-commit and burn myself out.

My current thinking is that if I do an SC, Spanish would be the best choice, since I feel that at my current level (the intermediate plateau, as you said) I just need to put in the hours, and I can usefully consume Spanish without too much mental effort.

With German, on the other hand, I'm still building the foundations and it's as much about quality as quantity. I recognise that I wasted a lot of time in the last couple of years by semi-passively watching films and TV before reaching a level where I could semi-passively understand enough of them for it to be useful, and with an SC I'd risk just doing more of that for the sake of racking up the numbers. If German were my main/only language and I were really prepared to focus on it, I'm sure an SC could do wonders - I think emk did one in French starting at a similar level and got great results - but that's not my situation.

[garyb]

Japanese

The dip in motivation didn't last long! In fact I think the fact that Japanese is less immediately-useful than my other languages is part of its appeal, in a way: it feels more like something I'm doing for fun and by choice.

I watched the rest of Suzume. I liked it; it had some quite spectacular scenes so I'm sure it would've been nice on the big screen. It involved a lot of travel around different parts of Japan so it was nice for virtual sightseeing and spotting familiar places, although the only one I knew for sure was the rail bridge between Honshu and Shikoku, which I crossed. There was a part in the Ochanomizu area of Tokyo, which I already knew about both for its name (means "tea water") and its fame for guitar shops.

I didn't visit Ochanomizu, but I did check out a guitar shop in Shin-Ōkubo (Koreatown) which was extremely impressive: I had never seen such a range, especially of classics like mid-20th-century Gibsons and Martins. A friend said I should consider buying a guitar while I was in Japan because of the favourable exchange rate, but I wasn't really in the market for a high-end model and mid-range ones weren't really a huge bargain after considering the costs of transporting or sending it home. And I have enough guitars already. Anyway, I digress!

Genki is finally starting to feel like hard work. I suppose I should get used to it, since I hear that the second book drags on. It's definitely the biggest hitter of my activities though: each lesson introduces a load of useful language. WaniKani level 8 is feeling similar to 7: a lot of confusing characters at the start but then getting easier after the initial hump when it becomes more focused on vocabulary using the characters. Again I think that's just going to be the norm from now on, since the characters are getting more complicated and so harder to distinguish and remember.

German

Finished Liebes Kind, and also went to see a German film (at the French Institute, strangely enough) called Alles reden übers Wetter (Talking about the weather) which, as one would hope from the name, is very focused on day-to-day conversation. Apparently they do free screenings like that quite regularly at the Goethe-Institut but it's in another city and I don't think I'm that dedicated!

Spanish

Finished Idhún. I was actually enjoying it for what it was and would've happily watched more, but I doubt it'll be continued. I've got lots of other Spanish stuff queued up on Netflix though.

I listened to an Easy Spanish episode where the hosts were talking passionately about videogames they grew up playing, which brought some nostalgia. By coincidence I came across a documentary on Netflix called No nos gusta Capitan Morcilla! La edad de oro del software español, about the golden age of Spanish videogames. I had no idea that there had been a golden age of Spanish videogames. Seems it was a bit before my time. It was good for hearing a lot of language related to games and computer programming.

I'm going off the Super Challenge idea again; I think it was just one of these ideas I have that sounded good at the time but after a few days I come to my senses again. I do want to keep up the listening and reading for the next while, but I don't really see a need to quantify it or make a long commitment.