Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[Expugnator]

The weekend was very atypical as I travelled early on Saturday and came back on Sunday in the afternoon. I tried just enough to keep my streaks on Clozemaster and Speakly.me (but only Mandarin and Norwegian on Clozemaster). I resumed gathering resources, only to realize I'm streaming most of my content, Georgian and Estonian series and audiobooks for most languages being the exceptions.

I read a lot ahead in my usual non-fiction reading, which I'm not enjoying that much, so I might finish it this week or early in the next one, and start something more useful. I also read in non-language stuff and finally finished a book I had been slowly reading, ready to start the next one from the same author. Only the forum is lagging behind. I even read more from the Hebrew grammar, and I can't wait to finish the noun section and proceed to verbs. I skimmed through Assimil Hebrew old edition and it was a relief to notice that it's already accessible and it will be quite useful. I want to finish the textbook stage at a solid B1 heading towards passive B2 in Hebrew, because I know how hard it is to find material accessible for learners. Other than that, the trip to the countryside was fun as usual.

Finally got to reading more in Vargas Llosa's book. Still hoping for actual contemporary fiction. I solved the mistery of not finding Nocilla Dream in Spanish: the three volumes of the trilogy have been re-released as a single one, even in the ePub version. Already bought, it's even on my old iPad.

Reading smoothly in Estonian and Georgian. This feeling is about the most fun in language learning, and it never gets old.

First day post-Assimil Hebrew. I did two lessons from the Absolute Beginner level, quickly, listened only to the dialogue and then read the pdf. I don't remember much, which means I went through the lessons in a rather chaotic way. It was just meant as a warm-up for the language at that time, after all. Now I realize that the lessons have useful information even at that level, and I am going to retain much more from now on, as a false beginner. I expect to become familiarized with reading the printed letters, as the ones I read in Assimil were mostly the cursive ones from the exercises - I'd read the dialogues mostly in transcripts.

Hebrewpod101 is a resource that can't be wasted because it has audio, transcripts and translations. I plan to do the same with Indonesian, that is, to review earlier lessons in a 'proper' way, making use of the knowledge I've acquired so far. In the case of Indonesian, pod101 is a rare source of informal Indonesian and of contrastive analisis between the formal and the informal registers. I'm still neglecting my Indonesian, meaning that I could be progressing faster.

I'm absolutely impressed with the recursion of the Routledge Hebrew course. Just the necessary amount of new words for the student not to feel overwhelmed and succeed in paying attention to grammar. Words keep coming back at a pace that prevents you from forgetting them. I've just finished lesson 30, the final one at Unit 2, and I could answer the final exercises effortlessly in terms of vocabulary.

I searched the Routledge website and there seem to be at least 2 other courses at the same format: Biblical Hebrew (which I already have), Moroccan Arabic and Persian. Which just totally led me totally wanderlusting for dialectal Arabic and Persian. Unfortunately, I have to reach B1 in Hebrew first, then Syriac, then explore some other Aramaic dialect and only then MSA then Egyptian.

Browsing through The Routledge Introductory Persian Course, I am sorry to say that it is far from following the Modern Hebrew methodology. It's a shorter textbook with 15 longer lessons. The Moroccan Arabic one does seem to be closer to the Hebrew one, at 65 lessons.

A lot done today. I'm happy about the progress in the opaque languages.

[Expugnator]

I keep forgetting to write down where I stopped listening to the Grand bien vous faisse episode at the end of the day. The content is streamed and it doesn't keep track on its own, so I should remember to write it in order to keep moving this wonderful resource (thank you PM) smoothly, not wasting time trying to figure out from the audio how much I have listened to.

A side effect of using Speakly.me is that I've realized that the knowledge of when to use each of the infinitives in Estonian has become rather intuitive with time and input. Better than drilling verbal forms endlessly when one is new to a language.

It was a rather calm day for a Tuesday. Language-wise, no breakthroughs or phenomena worth noting. I'm trying to give Speak.ly (Estonian) and Duolingo (Hebrew) more weight than the dabbling languages at my Clozemaster.

[tastyonions]

I recommended "Grand bien vous fasse" to PM a while ago. Nice to see it spreading.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Have you considered downloading Grand bien vous faisse as a podcast? The podcast player will keep your place. That’s what I do. (Thanks for the recommendation, Expug, PM & Tastyonions!)

[Mohave]

Yes - thanks for the recommendation PM, Expug,a and tastyonions! I've also downloaded it for tonight.

[Expugnator]

@tastyonions , now that you mention it, I remember reading that PM said he got it from you, the first time I read about it on PM's log. I just overlooked that info the second time I checked it and decided to start listening to it. Thank you !

@Lawyer&Mom , that'd work if I were using an app, but I'm listening to the audio at the desktop computer, at the browser, that's the whole point about having it as a background activity, two clicks away, I don't want to have yet another audio on my phone, having to unlock it, launching an app, keeping track and such ;

====================
An almost perfect sentence-method evening yesterday. I did little Duolingo and I didn't do any of the text input for the averagely stronger languages.

I have been watching all news videos from the Telecuraçao channel on Youtube, ever since it launched back in 2008. I'd print the screen and watch 3-4 videos a day. The problem is that with time it became rather cumbersome to scroll down from the earlier ones up to 2009, which is were I still am at the moment. Today scrolled down for viewing new ones but at one point it simply stopped loading the most recent ones in the list. Youtube lacks a simply, reliable filter by date (I've tried some workarounds but they wouldn't work). Now I mght just watch from the newer ones, even if it eventually means having to scroll further down as I'm not sure there are more than 3-4 videos a day and I skip some that are in Dutch or have no interview or voice over.

There is something buggish about Clozemaster on the browser. It gives me low points on sentences I've already mastered. And now it starts to put Norwegian sentences back into zero, even though they are already mastered. And the counter goes way over 100%, for that matter. Really weird.

A long and exhaustive Hebrew lesson, after I was already feeling tired and procrastinated at the Indonesian one. Sometimes when I'm too much ahead of thr schedule, I feel overwhelmed because it's the same absurd amount of information in less time. Sometimes being busy with other stuff actually helps digest the language information. Today's Routledge Hebrew lesson had a long text with many new words not introduced in a glossary, which demanded looking up a lot. It was also longer with twice as many exercises as usual. Next 2 are also going to be longer, and I hope the trend stops somewhow and goes back to the normal rhythm. My new reality of dealing with texts instead of dialogues is a challenge on its own.

The afternoon ended with a headache. Being on a bad mood, I couldn't really follow the good episode about Confucius at Grand bien vous fasse. C'est dommage, mais ce n'est pas la première fois que j'écoute quelquechose sur lui - et j'espère que ce ne sera pas la dernière.

[smallwhite]

> Youtube lacks a simply, reliable filter by date (I've tried some workarounds but they wouldn't work).

Using Google video search since Google has more advanced search functions?

[Lawyer&Mom]

I do all my podcasts on my phone, but you totally can do podcasts on a desktop computer too! iTunes is just one example of desktop software that can manage podcasts. I’m sure there are better options!

[Expugnator]

> Youtube lacks a simply, reliable filter by date (I've tried some workarounds but they wouldn't work).

Using Google video search since Google has more advanced search functions?

I tried it a while ago, don't remember how (I couldn't sort by date within a specific Youtube channel when I tried today), but even if it workedit was a mess, as the results weren't sorted by date and there were some intruders as well.

@Lawyer&Mom : I prefer to keep it low tech; one more reason is that I can't install any software at the computer where I listen to the podcast from.

=============
I decided not to listen to the Norwegian audiobook on my way back home, so that I could recover from the mild headache. It worked. I manage to give the two classes scheduled for the evening and only felt slightly tired after the second one. I have to watch out for taking some breaks when I have aboundance of time, because at such occasions I tend to move way too fast from one resource to another. when I'm busy with other things, those interruptions work as natural pauses one to another, but when it's all about language learning, especially at the end of the morning and early afternoon, I can kickly exceed my limit, unnecessarily and improductively. Hadn't I burned out around 4 pm, I would still have been able to finish my tasks earlier and dreamed of doing something else, like output.

I'm really looking forward to a breakthrough in German, my most neglected and underrated language. I feel that reading is better. As for TV watching, the double subtitles are not working properly as the dubbed videos I got have a different frame rate, so I'm reading only the Portuguese subtitles at a separate Notepad window. Might not be doing badly anyway, as I'm forcing myself to pay more attention to the audio. I believe it's better for listening, while double subtitles are better for vocabulary. That format of dubbed L2 and subtitles in L1 was what worked for Georgian - in that case more out of lack of L2 subtitles. Still, pretty much efficient.

My headache might be closely linked to reading the glossary of the book I'm reading now, in Italian; more precisely, in forcing myself to read faster than I can handle (both linguistically and conceptually). At the same time that I can't wait to finish this book and start a new one, I'm realizing the glossary has a high density of information and might help clarify some concepts I skimmed through during the main content.

I was chatting with some friends about which Arabic dialect has most resources. I've found good textbook stuff on both Levantine and Moroccan, then a friend said Egyptian actually has the most resources (in which world, I wonder). Another friend pointed to this site,

Arabic Sky

The language harvesting by which one learns a first language in the family and then reaps the other has to be done for dialects in the case of Arabic (and for other sinitic languages in the case of Mandarin, for that matter). After Estonian-> Finnish though, I'm convinced that Hebrew will be a good headstart for any other Afro-Asiatic language and then it will get easier after that, though not as easy as learning a second Slavic language.

Another long Routledge Hebrew lesson. Moreover, I got distracted by some surrounding discussions. Having to stop all the time and look words up damages efficiency, but it wasn't bad for learning anyway. I only managed to read the final set of sentences thanks to OCR-ing and translating, though. The Hebrew OCR isn't bad at all.

A friend introduced me to an artist called Pascal Gamboni (or rather, he wanted me to tell which language the song Paul is in:



Romansh, or so it seems. From the English translation you can figure out it's somehting Romance.

I could avoid the headache today by taking it easy at the end of the tasks. I didn't do much sentence-method, but I think it's all a matter of adapting. For example, I can insert a longer task before Routledge Hebrew, as I'm currently procrastinating at it.

[Expugnator]

Three World Cup matches today, so study might be neglected. To think I could be there...but Russia isn't on top 5 of countries I'd like to visit, nor is Russian top 5 of languages I'd like to speak in the country. Next Cup is in Qatar and there's not enough time for learning Gulf Arabic up to a B1+level until there, and in 2026 we have North America where I already speak the main languages, so World Cups are no motivators for language learning at all for me now.

Accomplished Language Textbook: Russian Grammar Workbook



Sooner than expected, I finished my last Russian grammar workbook for the time being, the one by Terence Wade. It's a very good grammar workbook and I recommend it. I didn't read the reference grammar beforehand or in parallel, and that might have helped (even if I've read other grammar books before this one, Russian grammar refuses to stick). The lack of translation to the sample sentences restrains its usage, though, as it's hard to apply a grammar concept when you do not fully understand what is being said. All in all, this path of just reading through grammar books or workbooks, forcing myself to do 10 pages a day, showed its shortcomings. I won't do that anytime soon and so this will remain an empty slot, until I decide to use it for another language (Estonian, for example). It's nice to have more free time in the morning, as sometimes I'd spend 30 minutes on this book and still felt I was rushing through it. I'm not sure how much one can learn of grammar by simply reading through a book; it works when you want an overview of the grammar of a language, and it wors as a reference for dealing with specific issues, but I don't expect to be comfortable with grammar at an intermediate level in a highly inflected language such as Russian before I'm comfortable with vocabulary at that same level.

For now I'm going to try doing the Duolingo reverse tree from Spanish. Once I'm done, I'll evaluate if it's worth signing up for the Duolingo grammar exercises. At the moment it isn't, because it's just plain drilling on stuff I lack repertory about. Maybe I'll only reach a high intermediate level in Russian after starting my second Slavic language, which I'm doing in 2019 anyway.

Grand bien vous fasse me fait toujours un grand bien en enrichant ma playlist musicale:



It was harder than usual to transcribe the chorus of this song so I could find it, but I managed it.

Thanks to Clozemaster, I've learned a unique word in French I thought wouldn't exist in other languages, chayotte. It's also called chouchou which is the Portuguese cognate (chuchu). I eat it on a weekly basis. I consider it as the neutral element of culinary: whatever isprepared with chayote retains its own taste, not chayote's. Or better, we consider it tasteless. To the extent that it is used as the raw material for creating face cherries in cakes and pies here in Brazil. Native of the Americas, it's been introduced as a crop worldwide, including places such as Abkhazia (Georgia!!!). Wow, everything is connected indeed.

Reading Estonian is actually becoming fun. Not close to catching up with Russian, but probably better than Greek. A really good surprise.

Once again I used OCR for translating the Hebrew text at the Routledge Course. It worked wonders. It felt like Assimil, but better, because the vocabulary is really graded. Today's lesson was of average length and very englightening on Hebrew syntax.

It ocurred to me that after the crown system in Duolingo, it's not necessary to go for the reverse tree in order to have more L1->L2 exercises. Duolingo does seem to have responded to the complaints that the course consisted mostly of translations into L1. So, instead of using the reserve tree Spanish-Russian, I can just go back to the Russian-English tree and do the second level. Just checked, and it's what I need now. If all goes well, I'll be doing Duolingo on the Russian grammar slot.

Not a bad day. Still not as productive as I would like, but on my way. Cleaning up some time killer resources might help next week, from the the Russian grammar that is no longer part of the schedule, then starting a more digestible non-fiction reading and even finishing the Tintenherz trilogy might give a boost in my productivity and save time for other tasks.