rdearman wrote:I am sure you've probably posted about this before. But why are you learning all these languages?
Do you mean why I'm learning so many languages or why I am learning each of these languages?
1. I have enough time, I love language learning, I have a routine where I can also get to read and watch what I'd be reading and watching anyway, but in my TLs.
2. Each language has a specific reason, but I tend to alternate opaque and transparent languages. I chose Norwegian after reading Sophie's World, and also because it works better as a bridge language between Swedish and Danish; I chose Mandarin over Japanese for several reasons, linguistic, cultural and economic. Russian because it gives access to resources for other languages, as well as for its literature; Hebrew over Arabic and Aramaic because it's supposed been more influenced by IE languages, it has more resources and it's not diglossic. The others for no global reason, usually cultural and linguistic affinity. I might have this more detailed at the front of this or a previous log, not sure now.
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Yesterday I managed to listen to the Argentinian podcast a bit more in the evening, as I was done with all app learning already in the afternoon and so had more mental energy for turning the podcast on when driving home from my afternoon class.
I started the day with a class in the morning, so I had to watch out for the activities not to derail, given the reduced study time. Fortunately it all went well.
I'm happy with my good results with Estonian, as I understand more and more from the soap opera. I believe much has to do with overlearning basic vocabulary as well as introducing new ones, the combo of a limited Clozemaster deck and the broad Speakly.me inventory.
I've come to realize that one thing that makes Chinese reading difficult in spotting parts of speech. Grammar words look the same as main words, they're all blocks of syllables. The lack of word spacing doesn't help, but even if there were spaces it would help a bit but not extremely. In an analitical language, you can easily spot the prepositions, articles, shorter conjunctions. Even in agglutinative or fusional languages, you can spot the endings. I'm used to that from Estonian, Georgian and Hebrew. I struggled with Estonian at the beginning but now I can spot the verb more easily and I also know from a postposition that a word that has it is certainly a now. It was easier with Georgian. With Mandarin, it's all blocks that I have to regroup manually and set my own boundaries from my Indo-European background and then analize the sentence from a syntactical point of view. This when reading. When listening, I can "think" a bit more the Chinese way.
The epub/pdf ebook reader I've been using on my Android phone for ove two years even at its former name has simply decided it won't allow me to access my own library with my own books unless I'm connected to the internet (which I bet it's because I get no ads when I'm offline). That simply defeats the point of me taking advantage of hidden moments for reading a couple of pages, not to mention the total abuse. Time for a change. Those quirks I run through during language-learning really gets on my nerves. We're more and more hostages of third parties and how they judge we're supposed to consume content.
About to finish current Italian audiobook and I don't know what I'll be picking next. I'm certainly reluctant to buy a new one so soon, but I'm not very much excited with the idea of listening to the classics in Italian, even if I'm tending towards this option in French.
Overall, I'm questioning many of my choices for native materials. One of the reasons, if not the main one, that I aim for at least B2 in whatever language I study is for being able to enjoy native materials (I'd add dubbed/translated ones as well) in those languages. That's "unir o útil ao agradável", combining business with pleasure. On the other hand, it gets harder and harder to keep up with suggestions of books I'm really looking forward to read, and series I'm eager about watching. I keep collecting suggestions from fellow members, but some just get lost in a bookmark on an email draft. Revisiting such lists every time I finish one material unit - which happens rather often when you deal with 15 languages and for most of them you do both a book and a series - is no easy option. I'm trying to find a compromise but I even consider abandoning native materials for some passively proficient languages altogether in favor of intensively working on shorter texts as well as writing in those TLs. This and I need to add an slot for German and Norwegian audiobooks, but once I realize I can actually follow the story in such audiobooks. Enough frustration for the time being.
I'm loving how conversational FSI Hebrew is. It's not the type of textbook where I won't see a sentence in the future until the topic is officially introduced. That makes it perfect for a false-beginner and as a pre-native materials warm-up (just like Linguaphone, but in the case of Linguaphone it's for vocabulary).
Starting to have fun with Icelandic at Clozemaster. Just like Finnish with Estonian, it seems much closer to its neighboring language than what is assumed. At the earlier levels, I'm recognizing a lot of useful vocabulary from Norwegian.
Leaving for the countryside again, no study tomorrow. Will try to keep my CM streak for the weekend, but I don't promise anything.