Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

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eido
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby eido » Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:47 am

Xmmm wrote:2. Extreme language threads. Less Italian, Russian, French, Spanish. More Toki Pona, Greenlandic, Tzotzil, Maori.

At least, that's what I want ...

I'm all in for Greenlandic. I also want Faroese, Malagasy, Native American languages, Frisian, dialects of Frisian... All the obscure dialects of everything! Yaas.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby MattNeilsen » Thu Oct 18, 2018 3:31 am

Xmmm wrote:
eido wrote:
Expugnator wrote:So I read a bit more from the forum. The threads have been repeating themselves even more lately. Is this the end?

What would you like to see, Expugnator? I’m sure I can dredge something up. Like how the ergative functions in a certain language and why it exists there. Or maybe we can all contribute to a basic grammar guide, delineating core vocabulary for linguistic study? There’s plenty we can do, we just have to find it!


I don't think Expugnator wants any of that.

He wants more:

1. Extreme language learning experiment threads -- no more "multi-track approach"! We need people who will sign up for "speak from day one", "8000 flashcards->B2 in 500 hours", "L-R all the time", "hypnotize yourself with audio courses", etc.

2. Extreme language threads. Less Italian, Russian, French, Spanish. More Toki Pona, Greenlandic, Tzotzil, Maori.


At least, that's what I want ...

Edit: I've been thinking about how I can "be the change that I want on to see on this forum." Unfortunately, I can't drop everything and try to get a B2 in Danish in 200 hours using only paper flashcards that I keep in a shoebox ... but maybe I can do this:

1. I will split Irish (semi-exotic) and Georgian (exotic) into an official "dabbling experiment" log. Right now dabbling is controversial, an advanced technique reserved for only a few brave souls with top notch linguistic skill -- but I aim to prove even an idiot can do it! I don't know if there's any evaluation test for Georgian, but it looks like Dialang has a "Treoracha i nGaeilge", whatever that is. Maybe I need a goal like "A2 in one year through dabbling". I think A2 in Irish is supposed to take 300 hours, so it should be impossible, but maybe dabbling gives you the maximum bang for the buck and is superior to all other forms of study? Who knows?!

2. With Turkish, I kind of missed the boat on the dabbling experiment as I'm already around A2. But maybe I could shut off the TV for six months (that would be tough -- Turkish TV is pretty good in my experience). And do a flashcard experiment. I see that Turkish is now on Dialang as well (wasn't last time I checked). So maybe I could do some flashcard mania, memorize a dictionary and test at B2 in no time. Lol.

3. With Italian, I'm a B2 in receptive and a B1 in speech ... and I have nothing going on there. I listen to audiobooks, sometimes I read. A little Italki. Plenty of other people are covering the Italian beat and I don't have anything special to contribute there.

4. I don't know what I can do with Russian, keep posting my ongoing suffering maybe. Or ramp up to 5 hours of week of tutoring and report how that goes (just kidding, that would be miserable).


I like all of this :)

I think I have a slightly different outlook on the state of the forum. I'm fairly involved in another forum that diverged from a parent forum (somewhat like HTLAL ---> LLORG). A major reason for the division was because there was a feeling that the original ideas had become too dogmatic - they weren't responsive to new data and alienated those who were pushing the boundaries.

Let me be clear: I'm not saying that HTLAL became too dogmatic - I've only been posting here for ~2 months and truly don't know enough about the backstory, even though I read a lot of HTLAL threads. What's curious to me, however, is the major parallel I see between the forum I mentioned and this one: active logs. In both instances, there seems to be a general movement away from "official" threads and instead lots of back and forth discussion inside people's logs.

My feeling is that this trend is correlated with a larger trend that I see in society that I've seen labeled as "the rise of the citizen scientist". For all the negatives that come with social media, one of the major positives is that people can instantaneously collaborate and share what is/isn't working. I've seen huge changes happening in two of my hobby fields (nutrition and strength & conditioning) simply because enough "n=1" experiments are being done and openly discussed.

Now, how does all of that relate to LLORG? I'm not totally sure, to be quite honest, but it seems clear to me that the Log section on this forum has grown exponentially in a pretty short timeframe. I think that trend is going to continue, and out of that activity, I predict that we'll see more unconventional experiments and theories emerge.

Related to that, I really wish this forum had a "mention" feature as I think it would better facilitate and enhance the discussion that's going on.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby Expugnator » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:50 pm

I didn't think an innocent line like I've written here so many times would generate that uproar. I was just reflecting what I've read in some other threads, that probably most questions about language learning have been asked, even if people keep giving their answers which are valid. It's just that most of these answers are now given in people's own language logs instead of on a forum thread.

Personally I don't have much to add to the discussion, my learning experience is rather trial and error, and even if I learned a lot from other language learners from here, HTLAL and from books on language-learning, I'm not sure I have the big picture and I feel like I'm rather going with the flow of information. I do reflect upon the process - this is basically what this log is about - but I wouldn't have anything conclusive to show. Or maybe it's simply not my style to lecture on others, to assume I can do something for others' learning process - as I learn in a rather individual way.

This forum remains as a friendly, fruitful place - much more so than HTLAL. There are new insights popping up all the time. What I meant to say is that probably most questions have been asked already, even if it's always possible to come up with new answers to them.

Most of threads still gravitate around the beginners, but as more and more people break through the beginner stage, more threads about B and C levels come up, which is inspiring and which is were different question might come from as well. I personally am thrilled to know how to reach B2 in an opaque language, which is something I haven't succeeded yet.

Actually I don't want anything in terms of "Extreme" language learning. Mine is meant to be sustainable. You were probably thinking about smallwhite, Xmmm. I'm probably not interested in continuosly discussing specific linguistic features like eido has suggested, I mean not all the time, maybe just once in a while. Linguistic curiosity is what moved my first wanderlust era, but no longer. Now I enjoy the language trivia while keeping an eye on the language as a doorway to a specific culture and a connection to one parcel of the humankind.

I agree with MattNielsen's positive view on some horizontalization caused by access to information. Something good might come from this information flood. Especially within language learning, where specialists have been trying to re-re-invent the wheel from scratch for so many decades.

=========================
I've noticed that lately my French listening skills have upped to a level known as "impossible to ignore". This is close to near-native level. In practice, that means that when playing a French film at the computer, even when I don't actually pay attention, I understand almost exactly what is going on. I manage distracted listening now.

The short novel L'occhio del lupo is intriguing. It's well-written but I have yet to find out the plot.

I've moved to the next level on Indonesianpod101, Lower Beginner. The lessons are of about the same length as Absolute Beginner, but much richer in terms of vocabulary, specially on the unrelated sentences. So I'll be doing only 1 lesson a day from now on, hoping to complement my studies with Duolingo and Clozemaster. If it's working for Hebrew, why won't it work for Indonesian? (Ok, except that I'm doing much more intense textbook studies for Hebrew).

Today was an atypically busy day (for the past months, but it probably means things are going back into normality) and I could barely make it to FSI Hebrew, leaving much of Clozemaster and the other apps behind. Next week might be equally busy or busier, which means I have to adapt to this new (old) reality.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby Expugnator » Fri Oct 19, 2018 8:12 pm

Yesterday my hat-trick wasn't possible (CM, Duo, Speakly.me), and I also lost my streak for the bottom languages on Duolingo. Better luck today, fingers crossed for next week.

It's too early to have any hopes, but I'm starting to understand Norwegian audio even when not paying attention to it.

Finished the novel Herr der Diebe. I like it way better than Tintenherz, even if it has a much narrower universe (Venice).

Now I'll keep flipping back and forth from Cornelia Funke and Andreas Eschbach, at least until I can find other authors I can stick to. I still need translations, and this time with the Kohärenz trilogy I won't have them in Portuguese.

Why oh why do all German audiobooks (but Tintenherz afaicr) have to be abridged? I keep flipping my eyes through the pages to find where the audio has jumped to. Really looking forward to being able to do extensive reading + extensive audiobook listening as separate activities in German.

The audiobook L'occhio del lupo is a really nice one. I'm enjoying it and regretting it's short.

At Indonesianpod101, I (re)learned some aspects Indonesia has in common with Brasil: hygiene and taking a shower twice a day, in the morning and in the evening; at Indonesia people only seem to brush their teeth 2 a day, though, unlike in Brasil, where everyone has a toothbrush to bring to work so they can brush our teeth at lunch (for the record, I have lunch at home but I always keep one toothbrush in the schoolbag I carry with me).

At the Georgian soap opera, one of the characters was trying to speak "Portuguese". It was funny.

As much as I am enjoying FSI Hebrew, it definitely wouldn't suit my learning style as a beginner. I'm glad I've learned to use it my way and broke the resistance for using the audiolingual method, as it's going to be useful for other languages.

Working on level 2 of Hebrew Clozemaster, for the first time I found nearly all sentences easy and got them all right through the 4 rounds. I'm not even halfway through this level, so it's not because I've seen them all. Actually it's the constant repetition of common words plus the new words being introduced that might explain it. It seems I'm not leaving any significant gaps in my knowledge in Hebrew. It might be the first language I manage to learn evenly, with sufficient revision to keep up with the rhtyhm of new content being introduced. I want this to replicate to Indonesian, but maybe it's a matter of time as I've put in way more hours in Hebrew than in Indonesian, probably 40% more.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Oct 19, 2018 11:00 pm

Expugnator wrote:Why oh why do all German audiobooks (but Tintenherz afaicr) have to be abridged? I keep flipping my eyes through the pages to find where the audio has jumped to. Really looking forward to being able to do extensive reading + extensive audiobook listening as separate activities in German.


I have the same experience. Most of the German audiobooks I've listened to have been abridged. Sometimes they've skipped entire chapters.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby rdearman » Fri Oct 19, 2018 11:04 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Expugnator wrote:Why oh why do all German audiobooks (but Tintenherz afaicr) have to be abridged? I keep flipping my eyes through the pages to find where the audio has jumped to. Really looking forward to being able to do extensive reading + extensive audiobook listening as separate activities in German.


I have the same experience. Most of the German audiobooks I've listened to have been abridged. Sometimes they've skipped entire chapters.

Try to find a Stephen King novel. I know he doesn't allow his books to be abridged.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby Elenia » Sat Oct 20, 2018 1:46 pm

Do you want accompanying audio for your German books? If not, Michael Ende might be an option. I personally found the little I read of Die unendliche Geschichte to be very difficult, while the bit I read of Momo was much easier. But they would both be good options, and should be translated into at least a few other languages- they certainly both have English translations.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby Expugnator » Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:51 pm

admin was spot on. I searched for Stephen King and most of the results had explicitly "ungekürzt" in them.

@Elenia, Michael Ende is definitely on my list, I just keep forgetting about him and Momo. Another author I want to listen to in German is Orson Scott Card, even if he's American. I associated Ender's Game with the German language for no clear reason, but maybe because I find the YA Sci-fi style close to that of Andreas Aschbach - this one indeed a German author which I learned to appreciate.

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The weekend wasn't much about language learning. Not much Clozemaster, and so I was left behind and lost some streaks for individual languages. No reading ahead or podcasts.

Besides reading the forum, I also gathered some resources. I can say I have native materials for Hebrew now. I have a series with hard-coded Hebrew subs and soft Russian subs (which I can put on Google Translate and do with Hebrew what worked well for Estonian), but I think I shouldn't rush with that yet. It's not that I'm doing too little Hebrew now, on the contrary.

As for MattNielsen's podcast, I hit 'play' on the first episode and tried to find out where text started matching audio, with no luck.

At today's Mandarin listening-reading, I've noticed that I'm starting to understand from audio-only when I started to pay real attention. This is a new development, as so far I only got a couple of sentences once in a while. Now I can clearly understand whatever doesn't have many new words. I noticed with Mandarin and Russian that I tend to understand the meaning of a sentence even if I miss a couple of words. This is a stage I haven't been through in easier languages, or maybe it was rather short. With those linguistical nemesis of mine, I noticed global average comprehension, the whole, might come prior to comprehension of - in theory - sufficient individual words, or the sum of all parts. Intonation plays a great role on that, especially with Mandarin.

I'm already tuned in to current audiobook in German at my second day at listening to it. The book starts in a thrilling way, the prose style is direct and engaging, but better language skills also help this early engagement. It took me longer to tune in to the Norwegian novel I just started, and I've regarded my Norwegian as better than my German all those years.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby cjareck » Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:55 pm

Expugnator wrote:As for MattNielsen's podcast, I hit 'play' on the first episode and tried to find out where text started matching audio, with no luck.

I played the episode 254 - about the 188th Brigade. In the beginning, there was an introduction, and the text itself started after about 3 or 4 minutes.
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Re: Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

Postby Expugnator » Tue Oct 23, 2018 8:52 pm

@cjarek thanks, nice to know. I'll check again later, but I won't start using them for the time being as my Hebrew is still A1ish.

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The day started so-so for Estonian and Norwegian, better for German and Mandarin. I seem to have focused more on daily life conversation for these two languages, because I have ongoing TV series with comprehensible input in the form of double subtitles, plus listening-reading. With Estonian I have subtitles in Estonian and machine-translated ones, but no listening-reading. With Norwegian, I only use subtitles in Norwegian and the series tend to be more complex, with dialects and plenty of cultural references and I see myself either distracted or paying attention in the content and less so in the language. The novel I'm listening-reading is also more complex.

Technically German is likely to remain easier to understand than Norwegian, given its simpler phonology. It doesn't mean that Norwegian is doing bad, though, only that progress seems to be faster in German at the moment. I'm pretty much convinced of the importance of always chosing the right materials. With 15 languages, though, I can't chose the correct set of materials all the time for all languages, so it's natural that I feel myself less motivated with some languages, as is the case with the boring, flowery novel I'm about to finish reading in Georgian. Page-turners tend to work better and this is no novelty, I've been saying this for the past years.

Today's Georgian episode had an actual character speaking Portuguese. With an accent.

Curiously, Berlitz Hebrew managed to keep the complexity throughout the lessons. I'm on lesson 15 and the learning curve is rather smooth. The lesson length remains constant and so does the number of new words. i'm not paying much attention to the answers of the exercises, though. The difference from the exercises and the main lesson - everything is sentence-based - is just that in the exercises I'm supposed to remember where a book was or who was standing and who was sitting in the classroom.

I'm hoping Indonesian grammar falls into place this time. Assimil was rather light in explanations and a normal grammar was too much, so I'm reviewing the earlier Indonesianpod lessons and I hope that when I start new lessons I'll have the basics settled already.

I don't know, maybe course writers think that since Indonesian has less morphology it would be pretty acceptable to teach all particles at once. That doesn't work for me, I might end up understanding syntax, as I know some Chinese, but not managing to memorize anything in terms of vocabulary, not knowing which particle does what.

No, I'm not starting Arabic now. I'll keep reading Team Middle East's thread but I won't start by now. I'll proceed with Hebrew only, which is going well for my slow standards. Won't join the cool kids by now. Won't let myself influence by the fact that Arabic in Saudi Arabia is closer to MSA, and Levantine might not be that far either, even if some essential words are entirely different (situation that reminds me of Norwegian dialects, even though I guess Arabic has diverged much more).
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