500 hrs by May

[bombobuffoon]

The grammar is fine for the most part but it doesn't have a consistent tone, at times it's super colloquial then all of a sudden entirely standard.

Yeah its also a bit unnatural with English as well, but I would say fine for catching howlers. This is a limitation I'm ok to work with.
Any in depth questions I can ask people and get an answer within a minute, but if I'm just pumping out sentence after sentence I don't like to wear myself too thin on people who are essentially teaching me for free.

Of course once I can reliably pump out correct (and no doubt odd) sentences in real time then I can make the switch to real people.



Did some of that today with my morning berry yogurt and tea, its not bad I can easily get 50% first pass, until I don't. Some sentences and words totally throw me. "Contact lens"... whaaa.

[bombobuffoon]

Motivation drooping a bit today only did one hour before lunch. I aim for two in the morning to make evenings a bit lighter.
I feel a bit better now. Still making stupid mistakes. Fluffed the KPT, and didn't realize questions are not in command form.



Now onto Chapter 3.

[bombobuffoon]

LESSON OF CAUTION WITH CHATGPT
I did several hours writing hundreds of sentences, playing sentence writing games with ChatGPT.
It gives me the sentence, I translate, and ChatGPT marks it out of 10.

This was really fun, I can do this for hours. A lesson of caution is here however.
At one point I constructed a sentence that was perhaps too difficult for me.
And so I constructed the sentence and to my utter surprise ChatGPT scored the sentence correct 10/10.
I was suspicious of this and give it to a native to check.
In return I received a bit of a verbal clip around the ear for producing a "sentence with significant errors".
I felt a bit deflated by this as I wondered how many of the other sentences also had significant errors.
Generally I have a bit of a feel for what looks right or wrong, anything with a perfect score I will need to run by a human.

This kind of example illustrates exactly what the problem with using bots are. They are useful and I think for the sentences that are literal they are reasonably accurate. Any essay or longer sentences with figures of speech or that kind of thing needs checking by a human.

Anyways it is fun and it helps my fluency helping me think on the fly and construct lots of sentences. I just need that periodic human feedback when I am not completely certain. That has got to be the way forward with ChatGPT.

ANOTHER FALSE DAWN OR PROGRESS?


Had a go at this. This page stands out because generally speaking I am incapable of understanding any language that is not to do with the immediate present. However this time I actually understood that the characters are talking about events outside their present sphere.
I think the pictures helped with this. I also understood all but one word "määräys". So I guess this truly is the ultimate CI experience

To add to that I understood several other pages that also had a context that was set outside the scene. Perhaps this is some form of wider progress, or is it just yet another false dawn? The minor gains certainly has been thematic during the past 3 years. I have had to fight over each word, sentence, concept in this language. There has been no magic moments, only false dawns. I could write a whole post about that. Any victories have been minuscule, like this one. I suppose I should just enjoy it.

[emk]

At one point I constructed a sentence that was perhaps too difficult for me.
And so I constructed the sentence and to my utter surprise ChatGPT scored the sentence correct 10/10.
I was suspicious of this and give it to a native to check.
In return I received a bit of a verbal clip around the ear for producing a "sentence with significant errors".

Yes, ChatGPT has some very significant limitations. It's a poor proofreader, and it's bad at explaining grammar, and it's usually blind to its own mistakes. Once it makes a mistake, it's almost impossible to correct.

It's a pretty good writer, and a decent translator (if you ask it correctly). Competing models like Claude 3 add the ability to summarize long texts well.

So if you're going to use ChatGPT, you need to play to its strengths. For major languages, you can ask it, "How could I say the following in ______?", and it will often do fairly well. Interestingly, the more expensive models are also pretty good at questions like, "I am a language learner. Please explain what the words __________ are doing in the text below." But keep it concrete, and don't ask for detailed grammar explanations.

And Finnish will make things a bit harder. Even for ChatGPT.

EDIT: Here's an example of what I can get Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus to do with some panels from a graphic novel, in a language with lots of training data.

To add to that I understood several other pages that also had a context that was set outside the scene. Perhaps this is some form of wider progress, or is it just yet another false dawn? The minor gains certainly has been thematic during the past 3 years. I have had to fight over each word, sentence, concept in this language. There has been no magic moments, only false dawns. I could write a whole post about that. Any victories have been minuscule, like this one. I suppose I should just enjoy it.

Graphic novels are fantastic. Yes, the pictures and the context can help you understand things, but you still internalize that understanding anyways. I have gone far out of my way to take advantage of helpful context to temporarily boost my understanding, and had very good results.

As for sudden breakthroughs, some of the fastest and most dramatic progress I've ever made still took 30-60 hours of hard work. My knowledge of French was built one page, one episode, one flashcard and one conversation at a time. Some people have been lucky enough to get sudden epiphanies, but I never did.

If an hour a day for a month produces a noticeable improvement in one area, you're doing great.

[bombobuffoon]

At one point I constructed a sentence that was perhaps too difficult for me.
And so I constructed the sentence and to my utter surprise ChatGPT scored the sentence correct 10/10.
I was suspicious of this and give it to a native to check.
In return I received a bit of a verbal clip around the ear for producing a "sentence with significant errors".

Yes, ChatGPT has some very significant limitations. It's a poor proofreader, and it's bad at explaining grammar, and it's usually blind to its own mistakes. Once it makes a mistake, it's almost impossible to correct.

It's a pretty good writer, and a decent translator (if you ask it correctly). Competing models like Claude 3 add the ability to summarize long texts well.

So if you're going to use ChatGPT, you need to play to its strengths. For major languages, you can ask it, "How could I say the following in ______?", and it will often do fairly well. Interestingly, the more expensive models are also pretty good at questions like, "I am a language learner. Please explain what the words __________ are doing in the text below." But keep it concrete, and don't ask for detailed grammar explanations.

And Finnish will make things a bit harder. Even for ChatGPT.

EDIT: Here's an example of what I can get Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus to do with some panels from a graphic novel, in a language with lots of training data.

To add to that I understood several other pages that also had a context that was set outside the scene. Perhaps this is some form of wider progress, or is it just yet another false dawn? The minor gains certainly has been thematic during the past 3 years. I have had to fight over each word, sentence, concept in this language. There has been no magic moments, only false dawns. I could write a whole post about that. Any victories have been minuscule, like this one. I suppose I should just enjoy it.

Graphic novels are fantastic. Yes, the pictures and the context can help you understand things, but you still internalize that understanding anyways. I have gone far out of my way to take advantage of helpful context to temporarily boost my understanding, and had very good results.

As for sudden breakthroughs, some of the fastest and most dramatic progress I've ever made still took 30-60 hours of hard work. My knowledge of French was built one page, one episode, one flashcard and one conversation at a time. Some people have been lucky enough to get sudden epiphanies, but I never did.

If an hour a day for a month produces a noticeable improvement in one area, you're doing great.

Unfortunately Claude is not available here.

[bombobuffoon]

Found this for 2e in the flea market. Takes place in the continuation war.
Its nice to look at but far beyond me.
I can get the gist of whats going on but the language seems a bit...old fashioned maybe.

[bombobuffoon]

Listening

My listening skills have many weaknesses. Largely the problem is a lack of vocabulary. Speed of parsing. etc.

I do sometimes wonder why, I don't understand "easy" dialogues when I, in theory have all the tools available to understand.

For example I was listening to this dialogue today



Mother Is everything ready? We ought to be leaving for Granny’s
now.
Father Got the flowers?
Maija They’re in the car.
Mother Let’s go then!
Father And Matti will remember not to take more than two
pieces of cake, won’t he?
Matti But Granny’s filled cake is so good!
Mother Right, let’s get going!

I highlight the parts in green which are fully comprehended. All parts except A are fully comprehended yet B makes no sense because it relies on A.

Indeed to understand A, you need those two words in red to be understood. The grey areas mark uncertainty that I feel around the areas.

So this is another problem. Not understanding one known word can lead to not understanding half of the message in the dialogue. Its as if words form a tree of dependent branches. Other times this is just not the case of course. But it can turn out this way too.

Sometimes just understanding where the problem lies is half the battle, to understand where the problem actually lies so a prescriptive measure can be taken.

[Henkkles]

Listening

My listening skills have many weaknesses. Largely the problem is a lack of vocabulary. Speed of parsing. etc.

I do sometimes wonder why, I don't understand "easy" dialogues when I, in theory have all the tools available to understand.

For example I was listening to this dialogue today



Mother Is everything ready? We ought to be leaving for Granny’s
now.
Father Got the flowers?
Maija They’re in the car.
Mother Let’s go then!
Father And Matti will remember not to take more than two
pieces of cake, won’t he?
Matti But Granny’s filled cake is so good!
Mother Right, let’s get going!

I highlight the parts in green which are fully comprehended. All parts except A are fully comprehended yet B makes no sense because it relies on A.

Indeed to understand A, you need those two words in red to be understood. The grey areas mark uncertainty that I feel around the areas.

So this is another problem. Not understanding one known word can lead to not understanding half of the message in the dialogue. Its as if words form a tree of dependent branches. Other times this is just not the case of course. But it can turn out this way too.

Sometimes just understanding where the problem lies is half the battle, to understand where the problem actually lies so a prescriptive measure can be taken.

"Ettei" is a contraction of "että" and "ei", and the side clause elides the subject for brevity; "ettei (hän (=Matti)) ota...". I agree it seems tricky. In Finnish almost everything that introduces a side clause can contract with "ei"; ettei, jottei, ellei, muttei, jossei* (spoken like this, but orthographically "jos ei").

[bombobuffoon]

300 hours completed

Just about. Towards the last few days I was flagging so I did a few cheat hours, and listened to some of this whilst walking and in the car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_NQNjLVpFI

It should not count but, its a bit like weight lifting occasionally you need some help just to finish out that set, the last few reps.

Its been a terrible month...what I have achieved...virtually nothing. The 300 hours also has not achieved virtually anything. Grade F.

I will not reach A2 by the end of 500 hours. Not even close. But...at least one positive takeaway from this is that I found some good new material which I think I can use going forward. I will plan around this material. So with that in mind I need to change it up a bit and define smaller goals so that I can measure progress every month. Its just too difficult to notice let alone measure progress otherwise.

Speaking and writing is easier to measure than input IMO. Its difficult to measure how listening improves especially micro improvements, so I need some idea on how to do that. However for speaking I will set myself the goal for the next 100 hours of producing some speech. Talking for 30 secs to 1 minute in mostly free form speech. I will allow myself to practice speaking about it, but it wont be completely memorized. I will record a video of this. I may talk about a picture or maybe talk about my garden. I think this will be tough.

My other goal will be to do 50 pages in my workbook. Thats less than 2 pages a day, easily achievable.

And for listening I want to comprehend a specific 1 minute passage of audio. Which I know will be too easy, so its almost not even worth setting that as a goal. If there was some way to train on say 1 piece of "training" audio and then have a short "test" audio with 90% similarity maybe that would work. No idea how to get that. Maybe AI generated IDK.

[tiia]

Just a thought: what resources are you actually using? What textbooks/workbooks? Anything that you don't use anymore either because you finished it or didn't want to continue?

Don't feel frustrated if you don't achieve the level you hoped for in the time you set yourself: Building the basics in Finnish is what takes the most time and effort.