Peter's Bengali log

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Jiwon
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby Jiwon » Mon Nov 20, 2017 6:41 pm

peter wrote:It's hard not to get diverted by alternative languages: I've got a latin book out on my desk now which I've been browsing through. If I had free time, I think my heart would make this language number 3 to learn.


Tell me about it. I am dying to start Japanese right now, although I should get through last chapters of my Teach Yourself Hindi and start reading आत्मकथा that I bought form Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedbad last year.
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peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:28 am

I forgot at the time, but saturday was a full 8 weeks since starting this log! I have been learning Bengali steadily each day since then and, judging by my times on the six week challenge, that must add up to around 100 hours.

My initial plan was:
1. learn some basic vocabulary so I can name objects/actions around me
2. speak to myself with questions and answers to force that vocabulary into active use, using simple sentences

I think I've met both these. I'm able to talk about a few things as I go about my day, and formulate sentences verbally and also in writing.
With the six week challenge, I'm working on:
The follow-on stages would be to use Radice's book to expand on my grammar and sentence structure whilst pushing up my vocabulary.

More concretely, this means finishing Part II of my TY book, which covers basic grammar, and also learning a total of around 1000 words. I am on the path to complete both of these within the challenge period, which will bring me to 12 weeks of this log. The process is still great fun, so I hope I can reach that point.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:04 am

Progress

The main two pieces of progress are:

  • Completed Chapter 23 of my book. This finishes 10 out of 12 of the chapters in part II.
  • Reached 800 words learnt and placed into Anki for review.
  • Continued with listening to radio programmes.
  • Only 60 words written output.
I didn't complete my target writing output, mainly because I had to work harder at the last two dialogues and a story in this chapter to fully understand them and extract the new vocabulary.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Dec 03, 2017 12:00 am

I seem to be struggling a bit lately. I see last week I only posted on the sunday, and this week I got disturbed with work to the extent I almost missed a day of language learning, but only almost! I finished my Anki set on wednesday before midnight and kept the continuity there.

Also, the latter four dialogues in my book are much more extensive than before, and require more serious attention to get through. There are many new words coming out of the dialogues too, which have mostly filled my target of 100 words this week. This is a doubly good thing for the vocab learning: the dialogue provides more repetitions of the words, and I'm finding it easier to remember them in context rather than as isolated terms. The dialogue gives me Bengali-English practise, and Anki I have set up as English-Bengali, so I check them in both directions.

Progress

Generally, I am on target for my 6 week challenge:

  • I'm in the middle of chapter 24, the 11th of the 12 grammar chapters in part II. I should have time to finish this tomorrow, with exercises.
  • I have just short of 900 words learnt (on a first pass) and in Anki for revision.
  • I have kept up some listening practise using BBC Bangla audio programmes.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Thu Dec 07, 2017 1:28 am

Progress

Chapter 24 is finally finished!

This chapter was a real struggle as several ideas have converged. Bengali does a lot with verbs in very different ways to English. There are different participles (past and conditional), roles for the 'verbal noun', and impersonal constructions. These often replace ideas that in English use active verbs, such as "must", "need" or "would do". All that, along with a tendency to drop pronouns, makes the interpretation of some sentences look like an art. There are some real, disturbing, ambiguities at times that, I imagine, would usually be settled by the sentence's overall context.

I'm sure (hope?) it'll come together with practice. I will have to review all these ideas, pull them apart and put them back together again in my own mental framework: there is probably a logic to it that I'm not seeing at present, as I've confronted each aspect on its own. I had a similar experience with the different verb conjugations, which initially looked confusing as I met them one by one, but became clear once I had seen them all and looked for some collective order.

Ongoing

One week of the 6 week-challenge remains. I need to push ahead with chapter 25 and learn a further 100 words to reach my target.

It'll be time for some consolidation then. Beginnning with a grammar 'cheat sheet', to get all the ideas arranged in the way I like.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sat Dec 09, 2017 10:07 pm

Progress

The learning continues steadily:

  • I finished chapter 25 of my TY book! This means I have completed part II, the 'grammar' section, and so one of my main goals for the 6 week challenge.
  • I've also continued daily work on my vocabulary learning, so I have around 950 words to be reviewed in Anki now.
Ongoing

I want to finish my second goal for the 6 week challenge, which is to reach a total of 1000 vocabulary items learnt. I have around 50/60 words left for this. I also need to consolidate the grammar material and vocabulary across the whole of part II in my book.

Over the next few days to a week I plan to:

  1. Finish my vocabulary learning, to complete the 6 week challenge. I also want to test myself at the end with the complete word lists, to and from Bengali, and get an idea of how much I have completely learnt of these 1000 words.
  2. Make a summary of all the grammar, organised in a way that appears logical to me. For example, the book introduces verb tenses distributed across the chapters, whereas I like to see them all together. Also, verbal nouns have a variety of uses, again introduced separately, which I want to consider side by side.
  3. Carefully reread all the dialogues and other extended texts. The 12 chapters each have a dialogue, building up from fairly straightforward to complex language by the learner. I should by now know all the vocabulary and grammar used, on both sides of each dialogue. I want to be able to read all the dialogues with complete understanding, of both the meaning and the structure.
  4. Redo all the exercises to check I have everything learnt. I'll do this after the above two steps, and treat it as an assessment without reference to any material.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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German (beginner)
Latin (beginner)
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Dec 10, 2017 11:39 pm

Progress

This evening I tried some new reading, and read a story in a children's book of animal stories - টুনটুনি আর রাজার কথা - "the tale of the tailor bird and the king". It has about 5 solid pages of text, around 750 words. I have gone through the whole story to find unknown vocabulary (this helps me reach my 1000-word target for the 6 week challenge!): I extracted about 30 words which I did not know (6 or 7 of these I cannot find in my dictionary!). The rest of the text has words and endings which I found familiar individually, but it is hard to put them together in my mind as coherent text, so I'm ready for a second run through to analyse each of the sentences. Even though a children's story, it makes free use of the various verb forms and participles, which is something I need to work at.

Ongoing

This story comes from a book of 12 similar stories টুনটুনির বই , around 9000 words. One of them is the first to be discussed in part III of my book. I'm planning to read the complete set after wrapping up my 6 week challenge, and expect it to reinforce much of what I've learnt so far.

Part III of the TY book leads through a series of increasingly advanced reading. I plan to use this as a guide over the next year, working through the portion dealt with in each chapter. I'll also try to get a copy of each book in its complete version. So long as the TY book's portion is representative, I hope the rest of each book will also be accessible - I'm an optimist...

I'm also starting to think about ongoing learning. Vocabulary will be key to moving forward, and so far I've been using a word list and Anki. Anki's been useful, but I'm hitting issues with my simple-minded use of dictionary words in. The meanings of words overlap, in English and/or Bengali, and I have several words I'm getting mixed up. If I stay with Anki I will need to put a lot more work into getting the cards together, and I've seen people put together cards with context, pictures, sound etc. I have an aversion to doing too much of this kind of thing on the computer, and would prefer a book and pen approach. I'll have to think about this, but I am hoping reading, listening and lots more writing will provide enough vocabulary learning opportunities, now I'm near the point where this is feasible.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:22 pm

Progress

The 6 week challenge comes to an end, and I seem to have logged around 70 hours in Bengali, so 11-12 hours a week.

My three aims were:

  1. Fully understand and practise all the grammar of Part II
  2. Learn at least a further 500 words from the glossary (then I'll have learnt 1000 words in total by the end of the year, which seems a good target)
  3. Become practised at conjugating different verbs - I should not have to "work out" the vowel mutation, stem and ending in popular cases.
I managed to complete all three:

  1. I finished part II of my TY book, and am putting together a summary along with revising what I have learnt (as described two posts ago)
  2. I just completed the extra 500 words. A combination of words from some useful Memrise courses and the book dialogues brought up my total.
  3. I'm fairly confident with my verb conjugations, thanks in part to a Memrise course, but also the logic became clear at one point. Apart from some irregular verb stems, the whole system is pretty regular.
In addition I started to listen to Bengali audio: radio programmes from BBC Bangla and some programmes from Youtube aimed at children.

This is all good progress. Things feel a bit crammed at the moment, and I'm not happy with how I've been learning vocabulary. But many things seem to have stuck. I've noticed I often recognise some of the new words coming up in the audio programmes. When doing some writing, I realised I needed and then used a particular kind of verbal-noun construction for the first time out of the exercises.

I know many years ago I reached this point in the book, but I never learnt vocabulary like I have this time. I can also now type in Bengali, which opens up many extra opportunities to use the language. Now, to consolidate and practise what I've learnt, and look ahead to new challenges.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sat Dec 16, 2017 11:40 pm

Progress

Today marks 12 weeks of this log, and I've managed (almost) daily language learning over the whole period.

Today I spent the evening in some intensive reading. I have a series of five school books for Bangla-speaking children learning how to read, which range from learning the script up to historical essays, stories and poems. I discovered today I can more-or-less read the stories and essays in the third book. I understand all the grammar being used, but still have to look up around a word a sentence, so around 10% of new vocabulary. The part I read today is an essay on fire and its discovery by 'ancient people living in caves'. The writing picks up on several of the grammar topics I had covered in the latter part of my book, so is excellent practise.

I found some videos on Youtube teaching children words for different situations: colours, vehicles, shapes etc. These are at least short, and not too bad to watch: I understand most of what the 'teacher' is saying.

Ongoing

I plan to continue with reading for now as a way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary I know and try to pick up some new words. I have these school books and the Tailor Bird book, which is first in line in my TY course book. These should keep me busy for a bit.

I'm not sure what to do with the new vocabulary. I am continuing to review the 1000 words I have in Anki, just because they are there. But many of these words are coming up in my reading, and at some point there won't be a need to review them. I'm not going to add the new words in to Anki for now, but rely on rereading the books and finding new material to look at.

I want to get back to some writing, some output to go with all the input. The school books I'm reading have "comprehension exercises" - questions at the end of the written material - which can be good prompts for writing out a summary and try out all the new vocabulary.

Ramble

I had been doing a few courses on Memrise - I even wrote one to master the language conjuncts. However Memrise changed their web interface - I hate changes - my Memrise account is now deleted! I did get a few useful things out of it, but it could become a 'thing' in itself. So far, I'm not missing it.

There is a surprisingly wide range of spellings permitted in Bengali, and some key words have a range of alternatives in my dictionary, sometimes marked as archaic or colloquial. So looking things up can mean moving back and forth (there seem to be differences in using -i- or -e- with the latter often preferred colloquially). Then again, I'm getting used to some of the building blocks of words, and what earlier looked like random endings such as -পক or -তিক seem to have some semantic sense, as I see them in similar kinds of words - e.g. economics and politics have the same ending, as do economical and political.

I've reached a point I recognise in my learning where things are 'dangerous'! I have reached my first destination, a natural stopping point of finishing all the grammar in my book, I've been doing this for 3 months, and there will be various home/work disturbances over the next few weeks. Often I come out of these periods with a new obsession ... I've long since learnt to forgive myself these constant changes of interest, it's all for fun really, but I'm hoping Bengali will become a lifetime skill. I've reached a point now where I can think about touching the literature of Bengal - Part III of my book gives a guided tour to several authors, so I just need to stick to the path. The coming months will tell.
3 x
"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.

peter
Yellow Belt
Posts: 64
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 3:23 pm
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Studying:
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German (beginner)
Latin (beginner)
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:36 pm

Progress

I finished working through the essay I mentioned above from a school reader: just under 400 words on the discovery of fire.

  • I looked up almost exactly 10% of the words, so about 40 words of new vocabulary. Many of these are "colloquial variants" of other words (which I also did not know).
  • Interestingly, I realised that what I thought was a 'fill the gap' exercise is actually a Bengali glossary of the harder words in the passage. I'll try to make more use of this in future, rather than going straight for the dictionary.
  • Grammar gets a good workout: 5 of Bengali's 8 tenses appear in this piece, as well as several constructions using various verb forms and both the past and conditional participles.
  • Sentences are longer than I've seen in my TY book, with various phrases put together.
  • Word position is clearly very important to avoid mixing up grammatical roles, or mistaking a verb form for a noun. This needs careful watching: I wasted some time thinking of "নামে" as a variant of the noun "নাম" for name, a word I'm very familiar with. The word position should have immediately indicated that the word was a verb, and is actually the 3rd person form of "নামা" meaning "to descend or fall". A lot of reading should make the expected kind of word more obvious.
  • These are cheaply produced books - there are mistakes ...
Previously I found these books beyond me, but after my recent efforts I should be able to use them for reading material. At least the subject matter is vaguely serious. This one was a kind of "Just So" story about the discovery of fire, and other essays talk about historical characters etc. The other book resource I'm using at present is stories about talking birds. These are fun for now for the sensation of reading actual Bengali, but I hope they are a ladder I can soon discard ...

Latin

I'm on holiday now, so I have some extra time. I've worked through a few chapters of Wheelock's Latin. It's interesting to feel the stark contrasts with Bengali. Inflections instead of word order, for instance. I was struck by the differences in available verb tenses: e.g., from what I can tell, Latin has a future perfect, which Bengali does not have; Bengali has an habitual past tense, which Latin does not have, and so on.
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"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.


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