Jeff's language log

[jeff_lindqvist]

(Final) Summary of 2018

1. Swedish - 139.75 hours
2. English - 126.75 hours
3. Russian - 89 hours
4. German - 86 hours
5. Catalan - 78.25 hours
6. Scottish Gaelic - 72 hours
7. Cantonese - 67.5 hours
8. Czech - 67.5 hours
9. French - 50 hours
10. Spanish - 48.5 hours
11. Portuguese - 40.5 hours
12. Italian - 33.75 hours
13. Esperanto - 17 hours
14. Danish - 12.5 hours
15. Urdu - 4.75 hours
16. Norwegian - 4 hours
17. Latin - 3 hours
18. Setswana - 3 hours

Again, I'm not surprised that Swedish and English got the highest positions. I read in both every day. The Russian bronze medal is a result of daily walks accompanied by audio content, as is German. What about the minority languages Catalan and Scottish Gaelic? Almost nothing but Glossika. Cantonese and Czech - yeah, sentence reps aloud. French and Spanish - for the most part, I did exactly the same activities for both languages, and finally I wrote a few pages of French after Christmas. Deutsche Welle contributed to Portuguese (and French and Spanish). 200 mini podcasts from News in Slow Italian gave me decent listening and reading skills. I'm not an A0 anymore. (But maybe an A0.5. ) Not a lot of time was spent on Esperanto. My neighbours Norwegian and Danish got their share during the last two months (and my Danish listening skills have improved a lot since then). Finally Urdu, Latin and Setswana - experiments which didn't last long.

Surprise: No Irish! (Other than Anki) It will change in 2019.

Books in 2018

136 in total (cf. 150 last year): 85 in Swedish (same amount as last year; two were audiobooks), 30 in English (again, same amount; three audiobooks),6 in Russian (five were audiobooks), 5 audiobooks in Portuguese, 2 in French, 2 in Italian, 2 in Spanish, 2 in German, 2 in Danish, and finally some really incomprehensible input in the form of Genesis in Cantonese and Czech. What if I didn't count the audiobooks and the parts of the Bible as individual titles - still over 110. I'm going for 150 this year...

Achievements?

A real life-saver: not going to the Polyglot Gathering (I won't go this year either). In fact, I barely travelled at all. Not Ireland (hence no Irish), no music festival in Gothenburg (no Irish), no festival in Finland (again, no Irish). Despite the lack of interaction, I'm still somewhat satisfied as I have used some languages, and noticed some improvement.

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Still awake?

[Iversen]

Definitely still awake, but fearing that you end up as a recluse somewhere in a house on Gotland, where you will spend your time not looking out of the window, not learning even more Irish, not playing folk music and not favoring the rest of us with your delightable presence at future gatherings etc.

[Axon]

Still awake and still impressed!

Last year you wrote that you didn't feel like you had improved. Here you note that you feel more comfortable with Italian and Danish in some respects.

I'll revisit my question from several months ago and ask how you feel after (many more) months of regular sentence-based input in several very different languages. What can you communicate? What can you understand?

[jeff_lindqvist]

Thanks for those words, Iversen! Fear not - I do look out of the window now and then (I actually spend a lot of time outdoors), I play music on a regular basis (perhaps with even more dedication than a year ago), and I also have serious plans for Irish this year. More about that in future posts. I'm sure we'll meet at a future gathering somewhere.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Thanks for stopping by, Axon!

Yeah, just a few weeks of relatively dedicated listening and reading (slow news, really) gave my Italian a huge boost. (Just half an hour ago, I read a post here by a native speaker, and it felt like reading Spanish - if that's a valid comparison.)

Danish has been among my top five favourite languages for many many years. Sometimes I've kept track of what I've watched in Danish (and Norwegian), sometimes not. A while ago I got motivated to listen to the language, and now it feels great.

Regarding sentence-based input, I am well aware that I need to supplement it with something else. "Real" content if you like. I can't say that I understand a lot from a 60-minute podcast in rapid Catalan. On the other hand, I don't understand such content in Spanish either. (I've simply never given it enough focus.) With the above Danish example in mind, I'm sure I could get there one day. When someone here posts in Catalan, I read it, and am able to decipher a lot more than a year ago (when I had exactly zero knowledge). I also listened to a 30-minute interview the other week.

My thoughts about Gaelic are similar. I read whatever Cèid Donn writes in Gaelic. My comprehension isn't as good as in Irish, though.

I've thought about applying Arguelles' "strong language - weak language" approach (mentioned somewhere in the clip from the conference in Serbia). I actually think it makes sense. Theodisce has presented an idea about listening to a related language for hundreds of hours. It's another side of the coin.

Anyway, I need to do something in addition to the Glossika reps. In both languages!

[jeff_lindqvist]

2019 - Summary of week 1

Time for a late update of the first week.

CA: 36th week of Catalan - 35930 reps.

DA: I finished the audiobook. I also started watching the Danish crime series Rejseholdet.

DE: I went through a bunch of podcasts from Deutsche Welle's Top-Thema Lektionen. They are 2-3 minutes long, have transcript, exercises etc.

EN: I started listening to Vanishing Games, the second audiobook by Roger Hobbs.

FR: A lot of scriptorium. I've nearly finished New French with ease.

GA: I checked out old resources like Beo!, Vifax, TEG and eventually landed on Easy Irish (from RTÉ). Well below my level, but I'm rusty and need some warm-up.

GD: 37th week of Gaelic - 36890 reps.

RU: Daily sessions of Tasteofrussian, audio+text.

ZH: I had a look at the podcast resource Mandarinbean which was mentioned somewhere. Short stories (say, 1 minute). Hanzi (either traditional or simplified). Pinyin (which you can turn off).

I think I finished two books during the first week - none language related.

[Expugnator]

I have already been suspecting this but now I've come to conclusion that we have similar yearly stats, Jeff. At an average of 20 minutes a day for some languages and 200 study days in a year, I reach about 66 hours for languages such as Hebrew, German, Estonian and Russian; half that time on Indonesian, Modern Greek, Spanish and Papiamento; 99 hours on French, Italian, Norwegian; 132 hours or above on Georgian, Mandarin. I'm rounding up or down some figures now and considering app-playing as no higher than 5 minutes.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I have already been suspecting this but now I've come to conclusion that we have similar yearly stats, Jeff. At an average of 20 minutes a day for some languages and 200 study days in a year, I reach about 66 hours for languages such as Hebrew, German, Estonian and Russian; half that time on Indonesian, Modern Greek, Spanish and Papiamento; 99 hours on French, Italian, Norwegian; 132 hours or above on Georgian, Mandarin. I'm rounding up or down some figures now and considering app-playing as no higher than 5 minutes.

Interesting! I don't really log stuff I'm doing during dead-time. At the moment, this means no Anki or Duolingo. On a good day - some 15 minutes per language. Usually that adds up to 2 hours in a week. (For some languages.) If every day (or week) was alike - 2x52=104 hours.

But I'm lazy.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2019 - Summary of week 2

Time for a late update.

CA: 37th week of Catalan - 36980 reps.

DA: I started listening to a true crime podcast series. More Rejseholdet episodes.

DE: More podcasts from Deutsche Welle's Top-Thema Lektionen. Each is around 3 minutes.

GA: While searching for online resources with audio+text, I jumped from rock to rock, bookmarked half a dozen links along the way, and eventually landed firmly on Sgéilíní na Finne. It is a collection of 37 stories from Donegal. They were published in 1928, and RnaG recorded them some time ago. So far, I like the format very much. There's no translation.

GD: 38th week of Gaelic - 37940 reps.

RU: More Tasteofrussian.

ZH: More Mandarinbean. A few short stories per day.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Intermission

Here are some more Gaeilge podcast-like resources I've found:

Beo Ar Éigean
Nuacht1
Raidió Fáilte
ClubLeabhar (Book of the month)
CoisLife offers no fewer than seven audiobooks for free.

General resources:
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/3374 ... -resources
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/4291 ... nd-YouTube

Teango's list of resources pointed me to these field recordings:
The Irish of Iorras Aithneach, County Galway (including transcript!)

BBC Irish has a section for learners, with at least two mini-series:
Ceann Dubhrann
The Swallow/An Fháinleog

Unfortunately, the actual sound files aren't available anymore, but for The Swallow, there are transcripts(+translation!). These are accessible through the Audio section.