The dreadful chapter on motion verbs is over, and I only hope I'll manage to retain something when I get down to using the workbook for the exercises. Now it's a much lighter chapter on register.
Another great day for Georgian reading. I seldom have to check the Portugues text. Also for German - reading for a while without audio forced me to focus on the sentence structure, in order to actually understand it. As for Russian, my choice of contemporary, translated text with more dialogues starts to pay off. I can see the tunnel at the end of the light.
It's great to be able to study Hebrew again, first time this week! I think I'm doing better with Hebrew than with my previous languages, in the sense that I'm not allowing the learned words to fall into oblivion. I'm using several fronts, mostly apps, for having many chances to learn the basic words. Learning Hebrew is so much fun it feels like remembering.
Back to Indonesian, too! Today I finished the first moduloe of The Indonesian Way (15 lessons out of 109). I must confess The Indonesian Way is boring. It's repetitive in a sense I don't like, as the words that get repeated don't seem so much prioritary. Moreover, too much emphasis is put on asking directions, with several lessons dealing with that. I think after 15 lessons and over 140 PDF pages there could be more grammar spoilers.
I am going to proceed to module 2, that teaches how to deal with government officials but the grammar so far seems rather basic. I'm going to keep at it until it works and maybe I will feel like starting Assimil.
Finally I could breath. I finished tasks earlier, and I proceeded to what is becoming my favorite extra activity: Hebrew learning on apps. Today I did Mond.ly and Memrise.
So, Modern Russian Grammar is over! It is a good book, but there is much less info on usage as the obnoxious Russian morphology spreads its tentacles into whatever section. I'm going for a full review once I do the Workbook. Now I'm starting to work on it.
The problem with the workbook is that I bought it on Kindle. I can open it on the desktop and on my iPad, but it's not practicall at all to leave it open at the main section at one and at the exercises at the other device. I had to take pictures of the answer key pages today.
i'm finding something weird at Assimil in that they're providing verb conjugation charts for the past in lessons 30 on before they did it for the present. And they actually introduced the present before that, just without the detailed charts.
If you remove all the drills and the Teach Yourself-style exercises from The Indonesian Way, the lessons are rather short. I'm spending less than 15 minutes on them. I even feel like adding an extra textbook resource, like equally short Assimil lessons, but my vocabulary so far is too small for benefitting from such synergy.
I'm finally consistent with my Spanish reading, though still only extensively and not learning that many new words. I'm usually reading it at the bus when coming from lunch, except on busier days when I prefer to anticipate something else earlier on the schedule.
Not a bad day, despite the chaos in the morning that led to a canceled class. I could barely finish the schedule and the post-scheduled tasks, but nothing else. No app-time.
Last weekend went differently. I spent most of it at my in-laws and so I didn't have time for studying from apps nor could I book any Skype lesson. I did massively read the forum, including the pages where I was mentioned at rdearman's log. Apart from that, I managed barely 1 Italian podcast episode, and I missed a Portuguese-Russian exchange I had booked for Sunday afternoon because I got home in the middle of the afternoon with still a lot to do and the timespan now is of six hours to Russia, so by the time I was finished it was already Monday over there.
The highlight was definitely the local polyglot meetup. I managed to stay there for 3 hours, before taking the bus to my in-laws' (meanwhile, I could read non-fiction in advance for today). Anyway, I could speak Italian quite a bit with an Italian and French with a fluent speaker. Pity that I didn't manage any German with the native old lady. She said she has retired from giving classes and doesn't seem much excited about giving free exchanges either. I really need to do something about my German, and that will probably start with some italki classes.
================== The numbers in Indonesian don't seem that difficult. Not that I care about memorizing numbers at this stage, anyway.
I'm seizing the opportunity that today was a rather calm day for writing a short disclaimer: I never advised studying a language for only 10 minutes up to A2. What I mean with sustainable dabbling is to have fun with languages you're very curious about, in a way where the knowledge you obtain through this dabbling can be carried on to when the study becomes serious, and where so far, at this dabbling stage, it won't interfere with your current languages (that might suddenly feel too boring at the plateau stages) nor make you feel like dropping the old for the new.
So, if I can't give Indonesian as much attention as I could in a 1-language approach, I'm convinced that working slowly but sustainably on textbooks now will pay off in the future. Maybe even to an extent that I won't need to go through a painful moment of starting two textbooks from scratch, which was what I used to do for my earlier opaque languages.
Now a refresh on how my study actually takes place. This is a typical day when I have time for all tasks planned but not for SRS or app-learning:
Mandarin: 5 min Clozemaster (4 rounds) + 20 min L-Reading/Pera-pera + 5 min Yabla (intensive listening)+10 min TV series with double subtitles = 40 min Spanish: 20 min podcast listening + 10 min extensive reading = 30 min Papiamento: 10 min news video + 5 min news text = 15 min Estonian: 14 min TV series with double subtitles + 5 min parallel reading = 19 min Russian: 15 min textbook study + 12 min TV series + 15 min L-reading = 42 min Norwegian: 15 min L-reading + 10 min TV series = 25 min Italian: 15 min audiobook + 5 min extensive reading = 20 min French: 10 min film + 20 min audiobook = 30 min Georgian: 10 min parallel reading + 10 min native TV series + 20 min dubbed series with subtitles = 40 min German: 20 min L-reading + 10 min TV series with double subtitles = 30 min Greek: 10 min audiocourse + 10 min listening-reading = 20 min Hebrew: 15 min textbook study + 3 min review = 18 min Indonesian: 15 min textbook study = 15 min
I stand for my premise that even with 10 minutes a day you can mantain a language and even make slight progress on it. Those 10 minutes over 180 days of study become 30 hours per year. Needless to say that with 10 minutes more you can double your figures, while if you keep thinking whether to start a language and/or replace it with another or not or where to find the most awesome resource you just get dragged into the procrastination zone.
Thanks for providing the language by language breakdown. It is interesting to see that even if you spend a similar amount of time, you have different approaches for your different languages. I also admire your time planning. I have fewer languages to schedule, but I also have less time to play with. Nice to know it’s okay to schedule 20 minutes and be done for the day!
2 x
Grammaire progressive du français - niveau debutant :
Grammaire progressive du francais - intermédiaire :
Thank you, Mom&Lawyer. It really is enough to call it a day, actually 20 min is a hybrid between stolen moments and proper desk-studying. It always works better for me to divide my tasks into short intervals, or else I risk not starting because I fear there won't be enough time. That said, if you want to see real progress it's better to see it as a minimal threshold, not a goal on itself.
=============== Today I went to the doctor in the morning, and so I had to invert my schedule and concentrate my reading in the morning. I even did some listening-reading on the bus. Having an audiobook app on the phone saves a lot of time.
Russian listening-reading is definitely paying off. It won't be long before it catches up with Georgian and Estonian, at a level more aligned with the time I've spent on it. Sci-fi novels on a language as complicated as Russian definitely don't count as comprehensible input for me. My journey with Russian has been marked by always using suboptimal input. Even with the series I've never had true double subtitles as I did for Mandarin and German.
I was upset that my old iPad wouldn't run the Kindle app proper, and so I couldn't leave it opened at the answer key to the Modern Russian Grammar Workbook. Then I remembered that I could simply use my phone for the answer keys, alongside with the desktop for the chapters. Even so, the app is awfully slow even on my relatively new phone. I couldn't imagine the Kindle app would work so poorly. Browsing further to a fixed position just makes whatever device freeze, even though the book is already downloaded at both of them. The whole format is impractical for doing exercises on a workbook.
Ok, problem solved. Opening one window of the Kindle Cloud Reader on Firefox, the other one on Chrome.
Learned the Estonian word for 'jealous': Kas ma peaksin olema armukade? Should I be jealous?
A friend to whom I recommended Clozemaster said she can only use the text-to-speech function on the app, not on the web version. Is it so? Is it a pro-only feature for the web version?
It's great to have a glance at the past right after 30 lessons at Assimil Hebrew, but I miss a consolidation of the verbal forms learned so far. I still don't even know if I know all the present forms of the verbs I'm learning in the past form. I can understand Ogrim and Josquin at this point. That said, any accessory learning for Hebrew is still focused on vocabulary. Consulting a grammar book without niqqudot would still be confusing.
Finished Fluent Forever. A good collection of language learning tips. I really appareciate it, except for the SRS proselitism. I don't think it is that necessary to reinforce it so much. I learn my languages, slowly, it's true, without resorting to SRS as my main activity, as that would make my days rather torturing.
I'm keeping my plan of removing all the polyglottery self-help from my to-read list. Now I'm going to continue reading The Polyglot Project (I actually decided to start it over).
Finally Indonesian again. Numbers aren't that hard, though I still haven't memorized from 0 to 10. Fortunately, it seems they follow the Western pattern and not the 10K pattern as in Mandarin.
All in all, a good day for studies. I noticed a slight improvement in most languages, especially the slowest ones such as Russian, German and Mandarin. Not so well for Estonian, as I had to speed up and so didn't pay much attention to the soap opera or to the novel. Yet I believe that with a little more focus I could be closer to reaching basic reading fluency in that language. As for Russian, I can already get more than the gist from contemporary, simpler interactions.
I tried watching a film in Georgian for a few minutes and realized I need to practice without subtitles, in order to become more familiarized with the language. I should pick a series that is of lower priority for that, to watch during stolen moments. I have several dubbed series lined up and that shouldn't be a problem then.
Expugnator wrote:Finally Indonesian again. Numbers aren't that hard, though I still haven't memorized from 0 to 10. Fortunately, it seems they follow the Western pattern and not the 10K pattern as in Mandarin.
Yeah, they use the same 10K pattern and the same Chinese characters for numbers in Japanese, and it took me a while to start thinking about numbers in that way. Now I can use Japanese numbers without really thinking about it, but I still have trouble when I'm translating into English for someone. Was it one thousand or ten thousand?
At one Whatsapp group, someone shared this song in the Neapolitan dialect:
I can't understand it unprepared, but it's great to have an idea what the characters at Elena Ferrante's tetralogy speak.
Opening parallel windows for Kindle reading is both practical and effective. I'm doing the exercises at Modern Russian Grammar: Workbook. Only mentally, and I'm not looking up unknown words, but I notice that I'm starting to consolidate at least the most employed cases. Like I said months ago, this is my last hope of finally having some grammatical security so that I can activate my Russian. I'm renewed with hope now that I notice it's working somehow.
Finished the Italian non-fiction audiobook. It was a great exercise, though the book itself had nothing new. Being able to follow non-fiction as an audiobook requires even more concentration.
Now i'm back to fiction, Il mercante di libri maledetti. Just the start seems thrilling enough. The voice is lower, unfortunately, but the reading is still of good quality. I have the impression the language is transparent, but on a second listen I could infer many more details. I listened to the Prologue while driving at noon, so that was hard to focus for the beginning of a book, where you have to learn everything new. So I relistened to it while walking back after lunch, and noticed that linguisticall and phonetically I could understand more this time, but as for paying attention to the story it didn't change much and I had actually noticed the most important facts at the first pass.
By the way, taking a ride most of the way from home at lunch meant I couldn't read non-fiction and the other Italian novel, which means I stood behind.
When a country doesn't have a dubbing tradition, one has to resort to kids audiovisual; that's why I got the link to Peppa Pig in Greek. Optimally I'd need the subtitles in whatever language, but I don't think there is any online.
I realized what is hindering my productivity on Clozemaster. I start in the afternoon by my most difficult task, which is Norwegian - random - text input. I still lack a good command of this neck, which is reflected on few sentences having been mastered. A solution would be to do the multiple choice for German, Russian and Greek first, because these ones can profit better from stolen moments, while the Norwegian text input fights for attention. Anyway, let's see how things come along before I make any changes, because after all this Norwegian text input is also my priority.
The review lesson in Assimil Hebrew finally has the conjugation tables I was longing for. It also has some vocabulary lists, which I find rather weird for Assimil.
Today was the day I was supposed to have one extra hour of headstart, but I spent this hour searching for tutors on italki after both the German and the Norwegian new tutors I had booked refused my lessons. Now I booked another one for German, and will wait a bit more for Norwegian. My usual tutor for Norwegian wasn't available. Since there is a meeting scheduled for the afternoon and I might have to leave and deal with some bureaucratic stuff right thereafter, I might not finish my schedules today.
I've mentioned this before but I'll do it again: I think that apart from languages where I'm comfortable (French and maybe Norwegian), for the remaining ones it pays more to write than to spend no less than 10 dollars on a Skype lesson just for searching for words most of the time, and retaining much little from the corrections and feedback (because there's still too much to correct). That said, I think it would be more efficient to book a session with myself for writing in my TLs. I can just pretend I am having a booked lesson, during the weekend, and work on my islands in their written form.
The Papiamento online newspaper I read usually has some audio extracts. They wouldn't work here, but now they do. Since I'm listening to news items anyway, it helps to listen to the ones from Retkaribense instead (or as well), because I'll get exposure to accents from Aruba and Bonaire besides Curaçao.
My headstart went down the drain with the rain as I had to buy the tickets for my trip from Salvador back here. Then some coworkers gathered around and we talked for over 40 minutes. Now I'll have to catch up and do what I can.
The other German teacher also cancelled the upcoming lesson, so I have no lessons scheduled for a weekend that I was going to spend mostly at home. My only chance now is a Portuguese-Russian language exchange.
Today wasn't a good day for studying. Besides the meeting, there were also many distractions with parallel conversations around. I only made it to German, which isn't half my schedule.
