MP's language log

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MarxistPigeon
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MP's language log

Postby MarxistPigeon » Wed Feb 01, 2023 2:07 am

Overview of last year and a half
This is my first language log. I'm not sure where exactly I'll start, so I'll just write. I'm learning Spanish, and have been for nearly a year and a half. It's been very tough at times, but I enjoy it. This is my first real foray into learning a second language, with the exception of the 60 day Duolingo streak I held in Esperanto in 7th grade, and the week and a half I spent learning Portuguese after watching City of God at the beginning of my senior year of high school. Spanish held my attention. I like Spanish.

I can't remember exactly what my mindset was like when I first started learning Spanish, but there are little things I can remember. First thing's first, I am half-Puerto Rican. Why is this so important, you may ask? Obviously I can just say heritage reasons, but the answer is that I don't really know. I have a very, very strong drive to sound 100% like an island-born and raised Puerto Rican. There's just a drive within me that says if I'm going to be half-Puerto Rican then I'm going to learn Spanish, and in order for my personal being to learn Spanish I must pay respects to my ancestry by learning the Puerto Rican dialect. I have no complaints with this, and I don't think I would have had the guts to keep going without this as motivation. I was always proud of my heritage, but for a while I kind of just ignored it because I felt I couldn't connect with it properly. This process of learning Spanish has done wonders for me. I've felt much more comfortable talking about my heritage. It always takes people by surprise, because I live in an area without many Puerto Ricans and I also pass as just a normal white guy.

The second reason I began learning is because at the time I started learning, I had just begun an AP Spanish Literature course with a teacher I really, really admired and was happy to learn under. With a small class size and really only a few people being engaged with the content, I progressed. My goal at this time was to pass the AP Spanish Literature test with a score that would give me credit (spoiler alert: I did). I had 9 months to study, and I progressed both within the classroom and outside of it. The real work came outside of the class, where I put in hundreds of hours listening to learner's podcasts, reading books on my own, and watching videos à la the Refold method/comprehensible input. I believe this contributed the most to my Spanish learning. That being said, I enjoyed my AP class so much that after I graduated I bought the textbook I used (Reflexiones: Introducción a la literatura hispanica) and have recently been working through a few lessons in it. I feel like I get more out of it now that I understand how to read and listen to Spanish better.

I never really assigned myself any rules in language learning besides broadly following the Refold roadmap. It really was instrumental in teaching me how to learn a language, and I would recommend it to anyone who's just starting out with a language of their own. I got into the habit of doing Anki daily, which was really instrumental. In the beginning, besides slogging through Spanish literature beyond my comprehension in my Spanish class, I also began listening to a few podcasts that I'll list later on that helped, and read a few books. I finished the entirety of Cajas de Carton within a few months. I didn't understand much of it and I was definitely punching above my weight, finishing the book with a total of over 800 word lookups. From there I backed off a little bit and began reading graded readers, while occasionally diving into native texts to make sure I didn't develop a fear of more complicated writings.

I also have done tons of passive listening, which I believe to have really helped. The vast majority of my Spanish immersion has been exclusively in the Puerto Rican dialect. The thing about Puerto Rican media, though, is that there isn't very much of it. There are hardly any movies or TV, and literature isn't very common, so it's a little bit difficult to find things to immerse it. My remedies to these problems have been https://cine.pr/ and https://libros787.com/, excellent places to find both of these types of media, respectively. Where Puerto Rico has by far succeeded in the mediasphere is in music. To be honest, I don't count my time listening to music to be a substantial part of learning, and therefore don't track it, but my favorite genre is reggaeton, and I'd say salsa is probably in my top 5, so I do my fair share of consuming music.

My saving grace has been podcasts. Since they are cheap and easily producible, there are more than a few Puerto Rican podcasts, including some that have reached some level of significance within the context of Spanish-language media. I have listened to a TON of Chente Ydrach. He's a comedian that hosts a podcast that mostly talks about celebrity drama. There are daily episodes, so that's a lot of listening practice. To be honest I don't really care about celebrity drama, but it constitutes a substantial chunk of how I learn Spanish because there is so much of it. His interviews are usually really good, so I enjoy those. Other podcasts that I listen to include CrimePod PR, a crime podcast, La Brega, a podcast about the history of Puerto Rico, Siempre es Lunes (comedy) and Puestos Pa'l Problema (politics).

Update
Currently, I’m in Puerto Rico on a 10-day trip. This is my first time here and the first genuine opportunity I’ve gotten that has allowed me to practice speaking Spanish. The first day I was with family friends, and it was a workout for my Spanish. I spent six hours conversing with them, and by the end I couldn’t understand Spanish correctly, which has never happened to me before. It sounded all jumbled. Since then I’ve been staying in a hostel, and most of my Spanish interaction has been ordering meals and the like, but right across the street from my hostel is a bar where I’ve been able to meet a few people. I expect to get some more speaking in as the days go on, as my mom is flying down and we’re seeing relatives this week.

Outside of these interactions, I’ve done very little other Spanish “study” besides my Anki flashcards, my r/WriteStreakES daily paragraph, and a little bit of reading at the park.

Once I get back from Puerto Rico, I’m looking to poke my nose into another language. I feel I’m at the point with Spanish where my main focus is outputting, and I want to begin something new as well. The two I’ve had the most interest in the last few months have been Mandarin Chinese and Modern Greek. My interest in Mandarin has been present for a long time, but Greek may be easier to get started in. From what I’ve heard, Mandarin needs a lot of attention devoted to it to get anywhere.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: MP's language log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Feb 01, 2023 6:41 pm

Interesting background for your study of Spanish.
Welcome to the Forum!
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

Lawyer&Mom
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Re: MP's language log

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Feb 02, 2023 7:17 am

DuoLingo *existed* when you were in 7th grade? My goodness I feel ancient.

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your Spanish adventure. The hardest part is behind you, maintaining your Spanish habit for over a year means you know how to persevere! Just keep swimming! You’ve got this!
9 x
Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

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MarxistPigeon
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Re: MP's language log

Postby MarxistPigeon » Wed Feb 08, 2023 5:11 am

Today I’m coming back from Puerto Rico. I feel I’ve had a lot of time to practice Spanish and enjoy the culture this last week and a half. This experience of being actually immersed in the culture has been very beneficial for me. I was worried about feeling a lack of motivation once I left the island, but if anything it feels revitalized. I feel more confident in my heritage and I’m not as afraid at speaking in Spanish.

This has been by far the most practice I’ve had with consecutive speaking so far. Since the night I got to San Juan, I’ve had approximately 268 minutes of strictly speaking time, not listening or downtime during a conversation, which is 4 and a half hours. To be completely honest I don’t think I sounded very good while speaking. All of my accent practice amounts to very little when most of my brain power is devoted to finding the words to say, and I am sure I made lots and lots of grammar mistakes that people were too nice to correct. I had plenty of moments where I avoided any sort of conversation because I was too nervous to speak as well, which I’m not keen to admit but is the truth. All this tells me is that I really need to work on my output. Luckily I have my mom and my grandma to practice with me, and I hope to take advantage of that more now. I also plan to speak with my language exchange friends more, and I’m hoping for at least one, if not two or three, video calls a week.

Like I said, I don’t believe I had very good grammar throughout the trip. I also know for a fact there are a lot of things I can work on when it comes to grammar because of my daily entries on r/WriteStreakES have had lots of corrections. The majority of these corrections have been preposition things and wrongly gendered adjectives, stuff that I really should’ve noticed before posting, but a pretty big chunk has been related to preterite and imperfect verb conjugations. It took me until today to Google an answer to my “tuve/tenía” debacle, and the answer was pretty simple. “Tuve” refers to a finite point of time, and “tenía” refers to events that are not bound by a specific point in time. I had learned this a long time ago, but simply had forgotten it and was causing lots of trouble for me. It’s a good reminder that when outputting it’s a good idea to carefully go over the same rules I learned when I began inputting.

Another thing I’ve made a conscious effort to recognize are my Anki cards. For the last few months at least, I’ve been kind of slacking with how often I truly mark cards I don’t know. This is for a few reasons. One is that I usually do them before I go to bed, which is purely a procrastination problem and not a planned schedule type thing. I’m usually tired and just want them done. Another reason is that I’ve made some pretty shitty Anki cards with too many words to learn in a sentence or something similar. I’m trying to recognize when I need the “Again” button now, and making sure I click it. I’ve already seen improvements with some of the cards I have trouble remembering.

I briefly touched on my accent practice above. I have done quite a bit of shadowing/chorusing in the past, but I don’t think I’ve put enough emphasis on the nasal elements of speech. Puerto Rican Spanish is very nasally, and I want to try and replicate that more while I’m shadowing. Also to make sure I’m doing it right, I hope to *gulp* record my voice and play it back to myself. I hate listening to my voice but it’s best to check it to make sure I sound right.

Also I signed up for the six week challenge for February. The language I picked was Mandarin. I know in my last post I talked about picking up a second language after I get back and that I was deciding between Mandarin and Greek, and I was leaning towards Greek. The reason I picked Mandarin was the reason that I wasn’t going to pick it before: it’s more difficult. If I want to learn Mandarin the best time to start is now. I’ve had a more long sustaining interest in Chinese history and society than I have had with the Greek equivalents, anyways. I still plan on picking up Greek and I’ve done some work with the alphabet but I’m just going to shelve it for later. Besides, if I’m not feeling the Mandarin vibes anymore, it’s only a six week challenge.

I’m having some trouble with finding Mandarin resources that are appropriate for complete beginners that don’t feel too confining. What I have decided to use so far is HelloChinese and Little Fox Chinese. I already had a HelloChinese account so that was an easy pick, and the guys who created the Heavenly Path Chinese guide strongly recommend Little Fox Chinese as a beginner resource and they seem to know what they’re doing, so I’ll be using that as well. The first couple days of the challenge I didn’t get much done but now I’m sustaining a HelloChinese lesson a day and hope to add in Little Fox Chinese tonight. I did not sign up to count hours or actually compete because I want to go at my own pace.
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MarxistPigeon
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Re: MP's language log

Postby MarxistPigeon » Thu Feb 23, 2023 6:24 pm

For a while now, I've used Migaku to make flashcards. If you don't know what Migaku is, it's an application that helps generate flashcards for Anki (and their own SRS system now). It's a very useful application, and I like that it allows you to add lots of variables to the cards, including audio, sentences, and definitions. The way I have been making flashcards until now is by ripping a sentence from the books I have been reading, or less often the shows I have been watching. I can churn out a ton of flashcards like this, because I use an e-reader a lot and will just go through my "vocabulary look-ups" list and search for those words in the same ebook on Calibre to find the sentences. These sentences could be a paragraph long or a few words long. However a week or two ago I read this Medium post, and one thing that stuck out to me was that the author uses an average of three or four words per sentence. This has made me realize a problem for me is that my flashcards are overly complicated, are often way too long, and at times will have 4 or 5 unknown words. I have simplified my approach of making cards now, though, because I am mostly using sentences from Tatoeba that are automatically integrated into Migaku. I still use the vocabulary from my books, but I like this method a lot better. I think they stick better in my head.

My writing in Spanish has improved drastically since I began writing on my laptop instead of my phone. I assume that this is because my phone makes it much easier to half-ass a paragraph or two before going to bed. Writing in Obsidian on my laptop makes me more focused, and allows me to better keep track of words for the Output Challenge this year since it has a word count feature. The past week especially, I have been doing pretty well. I am also attempting to read people's corrections sooner on r/WriteStreakES, so I can better improve areas where I'm weak. The biggest thing I still want to work on in this area is my consistency. There have been plenty of days where it's too late to write something or I'm really tired, and I'd like to change that. My grammar challenges right now are still problems with prepositions (especially de/por) and using the wrong adjective gender.

This week I registered for a Spanish learner's vocabulary study being done by the University of Maryland, and I had to complete a pre-test comprised of two parts. The first part was a quiz on whether or not a given word was a real Spanish word or not, and the second part was basically just cloze completions. It placed me at an "intermediate" level with a score of 35/50. While I was hoping for a higher score, I can only see this as motivation to learn a lot more Spanish vocabulary going forward. :lol:

For Chinese, I have been trying to use HelloChinese, ChinesePod, and Little Fox Chinese everyday. HelloChinese really is excellent for beginners, in my opinion. I really have been enjoying the course and I find it engaging. I don't really care for learning through "apps" but I think this one is pretty good. I have been planning on using this routine for ChinesePod, but I haven't really had time to go back and examine the lessons yet. Little Fox has been useful for pronunciation, but pronunciation exercises are so tedious and boring I am really tempted to just skip ahead to the stories. I still have to knock out a bunch of initial sounds and compound final sounds before I get there, though. In addition to these things, I began using the Refold Mandarin Community's 1K Deck and I really enjoy it. It has high quality audio, pictures, and sentences. It's nice it's free, too. I've had a few false starts in Mandarin using this deck and I've found I can remember the meaning of most of the characters from before, if not at least recognize them.

On a more personal note, I have recently applied for a university and was accepted. I graduated high school last year with desires of becoming a master electrician, and while I still have those ambitions (great pay, great skills, strong union, and I like the work most of the time) I am considering going to university beforehand. I believe that college affords me an opportunity to study things I like more in-depth. This primarily includes fitness, literature, history, economics, and especially language learning. I haven't had a lot of time for these things since I graduated high school and even before that, but I am excited by the prospect of being a student again and being able to enjoy learning about these things.

In my current job as an electrical pre-apprentice, I have the opportunity to work on listening a lot while working, so I utilize that in the form of podcasts. If I go to university, I expect an approach (at least for my Spanish) more literature-focused. It would certainly be a change but I would appreciate the challenge and I hope that it would push me over into "advanced" territory.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: MP's language log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Feb 24, 2023 6:40 pm

Interesting life/career choices. Good luck with both university and electricity!
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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MarxistPigeon
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Re: MP's language log

Postby MarxistPigeon » Tue Mar 07, 2023 2:49 am

Thank you Mork! Very much appreciated. :D
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MarxistPigeon
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Re: MP's language log

Postby MarxistPigeon » Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:04 pm

Chinese

So I've just recently wrapped up the 6-Week Challenge for Chinese. I will be completely honest, I didn't do too much. My main focus is still Spanish and I was just looking for a taste of Chinese, as it is a language I am interested in in the future. One thing I am positive of is that I would like a teacher for Chinese the next time I pick it up. There's a lot to navigate and it would be nice to have a guide.

Something interesting I found for anyone who has just started Chinese is Mandarin Poster: https://mandarinposter.com/. It's a poster with the 1000 most common Chinese characters on it. I printed it out and hung it on my wall and I like the way it looks. Even if I'm not focused on Chinese at the moment it's nice to have a little decoration.

Speaking/writing

I've also started using vocal warm-ups before shadowing or speaking just to see how it helps. I'm using this guy's method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8uKrqRXaxk.

This week I started using HelloTalk for the first time. I have had it for a while now but have never bothered to use it. I began texting one person and while I was texting that person, another person texted me, and then another. Next thing I know I’m talking to like six people. It forces me to think in Spanish. I could easily spend a whole afternoon just texting people.

Reading

I finished two books this month in Spanish:
El corazón frente al mar by Luis Rafael Sanchez
Filiberto Ojeda Ríos: su propuesta, su visión by José Elias Torres

El corazón frente al mar is a beautiful portrait of San Juan, PR. I liked reading about things I saw when I was there, and Sanchez, who grew up in Old San Juan as a kid, is poetic in his description. The second book is a transcribed radio interview from 2006 with Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, a Puerto Rican independence activist and militant. I thought it was very interesting and informative.

I started El reino de este mundo by Alejo Carpentier. I separate English and Spanish copies and I read the English first, then go back over with the Spanish and the English as my guide.
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