Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[MattNeilsen]

My aunt recommended Yuval Noah Harari. Found one of his books in Hebrew, that's non-fiction read lined up (though I wonder how I'll manage to read and learn anything linguistically without vowels - probably leave it until I reach B2).

That's funny - I have Yuval Noah Harari listed as one of my resources to get to in the future as well. I read his book Sapiens in English and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would love to read all of his books in his native Hebrew.

Another person I recently discovered (if you're interested in nutrition) is Miki Ben-Dor. He has a Ph.D. and works with the Archeology department at Tel Aviv University. He's written some interesting anthropological articles about human nutrition and the connection between evolution and nutrition in human prehistory. I believe a lot of his work is published in Hebrew, and since it's a field that I'm highly interested in, I think it will make for great material.

[Axon]

What do you mean by your "current needs" in Indonesian? What would you like to understand that you find yourself unable to? And what are some examples of different yet essential vocab introduced in your different resources?

Funny, I didn't jump around a huge amount when I began learning, but of course I encountered the huge vocabulary problem once I was in real Indonesia. I'd learn some words in class and other words on the street and find that they meant just about the same thing.

Apparently that feeling will never stop. I have eaten literally hundreds of meals in Indonesian restaurants, large and small, and yet the word "bon" in the first lesson of Ayo Membaca was new to me. I asked to pay by saying "mau bayar" or "minta bill" and then the receipt itself was always "struk."

By the way, anybody paying 17.500 for a bowl of soto ayam is getting taken for a ride. 5.000 is more like it!

[Expugnator]

What do you mean by your "current needs" in Indonesian? What would you like to understand that you find yourself unable to? And what are some examples of different yet essential vocab introduced in your different resources?

I'm not aiming at understanding anything specific for the time being. It's just an overall feeling that I'm not learning the most important words first, that each resource introduces a whole set of different vocabulary. With Hebrew, which is supposed to be harder, I'm getting reinforcement on really crucial words, and I'm progressing faster. Also, I have only two resources based on short lessons and dialogues, and they aren't the best in their respective series.

I'm looking forward to moving past this A1 level and being more relaxed so I can enjoy those cultural references better.

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Yesterday was much calmer language-wise and I managed Duolingo. Typing Hebrew on my phone, as well as training listening, doesn't seem so insurmountable anymore.

I just can't tune in to Les particules élémentaires. It seems to have a higher dosis of what was already gross in his other books. Also, at Soumission there was a main character to follow, while at this one it doesn't feel that much so.

There was a charming, upbeat song in Norwegian at the end of Kampen for tilværelsen's season 2 episode 2, but I can't find it for whatever's sake, not after typing its lyrics on Google (the song is subtitled).

I'm not a fan of FSI, DLI and family, but I appreciate their courses for their thoroughfulness. Such thoroughfulness is way above overwhelming for a beginner, but maybe it will serve me well for Estonian (for which I keep postponing a review of the DLI-like Basic Estonian), Hebrew (I want to practice like conversation more, as well as transcription for internalizing pronunciation) and Indonesian (I find the materials I've used so far fail to introduce content in a coherent sequence).

So far the old Berlitz Hebrew has been so old-school that the lesson all turns around objects, especially classroom items. No real conversation for the time being.

Duolingo now has Hawaiian and Navajo! The releases have been much faster lately. Too bad they didn't aprove of a Papiamento course yet, I'd be willing to contribute.

Just did FSI Hebrew Unit 1 and I survived. It didn't take long either, only 10 minutes. I just played the audio on the background. It's slow, so I read faster as the content was still easy. I hope it doesn't escalate or the lessons get longer. I saw some tapes are split, which means the lesson is twice as long. I might have to split these as well.

I never though I'd say this, but I'm more and more convinced of the importance of overlearning early vocabulary, for example through repeating the earlier levels on Clozemaster. You can always proceed to learning and consolidating intermediate vocabulary through parallel reading later on.

Funny that just a few days after complaining that the 100-most common words in Clozemaster Indonesian seemed more unknown than the 500-most common which I have been doing (which meant that both the distribution of them wasn't much wise in terms of frequency and that I didn't study them enough even if it was considered as "Mastered" by Clozemaster), I'm finally starting to grasp the meaning of those words, which is probably thanks to reviewing the level again and restarting Indonesianpod101 from the Absolute Beginner level.

[Mista]

Duolingo now has Hawaiian and Navajo! The releases have been much faster lately. Too bad they didn't aprove of a Papiamento course yet, I'd be willing to contribute.

There's no need to get excited about this just yet. I tried them out, and they both have around ten topics, Navajo is completely lacking sound, and I think it's most likely that the release was a mistake. We'll have to see what happens next week, but whether they stay or go, they are clearly not finished products.

[Expugnator]

Duolingo now has Hawaiian and Navajo! The releases have been much faster lately. Too bad they didn't aprove of a Papiamento course yet, I'd be willing to contribute.

There's no need to get excited about this just yet. I tried them out, and they both have around ten topics, Navajo is completely lacking sound, and I think it's most likely that the release was a mistake. We'll have to see what happens next week, but whether they stay or go, they are clearly not finished products.

It's a pity that they've lowered their requirements for release in beta that much! And I thought Indonesian was a dry course. Well, let's hope they'll keep improving those courses.

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The weekend wasn't productive language-wise. I lost my streak in most Clozemaster languages and in Speakly.me, did no Duolingo, and I'm ok with that. The news is that on Friday I started Icelandic on Clozemaster. I was looking forward to adding another semi-opaque language to this slow, graded dabbling. Swedish would be too close. Icelandic is different enough that I can separate it from Norwegian in my head, while still acquiring invaluable passive knowledge that will help me later. I'm really looking forward to doing the same with a third Slavic language, probably a Southern Slavic one, but I'd still have trouble setting it apart from Russian.

At the translated novel by Jo Nesbø, I found this way of saying goodbye, 回头见了, which I don't remember having seen before.

Today I finally started to tune in to Mengele Zoo. It's harder to do so, because long paragraphs make it much harder to concentrate and easier to lose focus.

FSI Hebrew is starting to fit into my routine. The vocabulary feels useful and not too much at lesson 2. I hope it remains so, but I expect a vocabulary flood halfway through the course. Well, at least there is transcription, it's my chance for learning how to properly pronounce words.

[Expugnator]

At Kampen for tilværelsen, I noticed I'm starting to become familiarized with some voices, and not only the closest to Oslo dialect, but even a few different ones (I'd still struggle with bergensk, though). I might soon be able to understand on the background, which would hopefully encourage me to try audiobooks again - I got a couple from Jo Nesbø from whom I've read quite a few novels in Norwegian and in Mandarin.

Now that I've started FSI, I'm finding Berlitz Hebrew not that much useful. The transliteration system, based on the English spelling, confuses me more than anything. Wouldn't it be simpler to stick to the vowels' face values, instead of constructs such as -igh for a simple ai diphthong?

At Unit 3, FSI Hebrew is drilling possessive suffixes in the singular and the dual. I'm not sure I'm going to use all that, that often. Still enjoying the course.

I was thinking about having a permanent FSI/DLI slot for consolidation. Anything not longer than 15 minutes, 20 on a good day. I'd just do one language at a time. After Hebrew, I could do Basic Estonian and then Indonesian, and Greek if the spelling doesn't confuse me enough. I'd then check if it's worth getting back to Russian or Mandarin, though I doubt that. I know I'm unlikely to overlearn those drills anyway. The audio is so slow that I can read the lesson before it's played over. I've prepared the Basic Estonian ones (reducing noise and truncating silence), but I won't bother with that now as I'll be covering mostly content I've already seen in other sources.

I'm struggling to keep up with my Spanish read. It doesn't help the cause that the "novel" I'm reading is actually a series of intertwined short chapters, almost as if the narrator were zapping through TVcable TV channels.

I'm really fed up with Clozemaster's bugs and inconsistencies about my score. I should let go of all that gamification, even if it motivates me quite a bit. I lose an important part of my score because it shows as 0% even though I have mastered a given level/deck. Moreover, I can't work on mastering only on the specific unmastered sentences within a level, thanks to that bug. This is what I have been doing with Modern Greek, but now everytime I play a sublevel all sentences get displayed again instead of only the ones I was supposed to master. I contacted them today, hope they answer me.

[MattNeilsen]

You and @cjareck are making me think I need to give FSI Hebrew another shot...

Oh, and I found a website where you can download Srugim Season 1 & 2 with Hebrew subtitles! I'll post it in my log tomorrow, but here's the link if you're interested. I'm really tempted to try figuring out @emk's subs2srs strategy and do an intensive study of the first ~5 episodes in Season 1. I sense that would give me a huge bump in my comprehension, and by the end, I'd be really good at talking about the dating lives of 30-year-old Jews living in Jerusalem

[Expugnator]

Thanks, I'll check it out! I'm more tempted to start with a series for which I have subtitles in other languages as well.

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Yesterday was such a calm day that I not only managed all of the Clozemaster plus some extra, then Duolingo proper, but also solved a task that was pending for a couple of weeks.

I really hope my Norwegian reading is improving overall and not just because I'm becoming familiarized with this particular book. It's not so much rich in advanced Norwegian vocabulary as it is in local Latin-american words and proper names/nicknames. What I notice when my reading is improving is that every new book becomes easier to read sooner than the previous one, and I really hope this is the case now and I have the right to feel optimistic about Norwegian.

Да is such an affirmatively strong word that I'm always tempted to use it in Georgian and Norwegian, and I have to refrain from doing that, sometimes unsuccessfully.

It's really a time of changes. I never thought I'd look forward to an FSI lesson. Anyway, it seems back at normality with the introduction of the preposition shel- .

The Clozemaster bug now has affected Turkish, when I was about to get all the words as "read". Now I'm clueless, as when playing they are set back to 0%, and in the end the deck surpasses 100% of 'read' words, as is the case already with other languages.

I let Speaky open and got many chat requests, mostly from Georgian. I can chat in Georgian almost freely within my language islands (which I didn't bother working on, in the end; I just got better at talking about myself and how I learned the language, with practice). When I wanted to say "impatiently", one word came up to mind, one which I hadn't seen written, but which I remembered from the dubbed series I watched. So I was unsure and decided to check, and turned out I was correct, That means I'm already picking up words from listening only.

[rdearman]

I am sure you've probably posted about this before. But why are you learning all these languages?

[cjareck]

Да is such an affirmatively strong word that I'm always tempted to use it in Georgian and Norwegian, and I have to refrain from doing that, sometimes unsuccessfully.

You are not the only one who has this problem. Many years ago I was having private lessons in Russian, and after them, I was going to seminary lead by a German professor. I remember saying Да a few times