Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[Expugnator]

The weekend consisted mostly of a short trip to São Paulo. During the 1-hour in-plane wait and the other two hours of flight (back and forth) I finally managed to finish the cumbersome book I was reading in Italian, as my non-fiction read. Now I'm reading a lighter, easier, more interesting and with larger font book in Spanish, a language I read better in non-fiction than Italian. I expect to have back at least 20 minutes a day. My next non-fiction reads will all come from my pile of to-read books scattered through 5 differente devices, in any stronger language, even Portuguese.

I barely managed to keep the streak on Duolingo (only Mandarin and Norwegian) and on Speakly.me (very useful lately). I missed some opportunities of speaking in Mandarin at the hotel. The workers had a little trouble talking to the Chinese guys in English (their English was ok but the Chinese accent was heavy), and in the end the hotel staff managed to explain to them about the rewarding points system (the simple check-in info brought no trouble). I felt like I could just chime in and solve any issues. I'd have little trouble explaining something in Mandarin but I'm not sure I'd be able to understand the answer though, and they might end up switching to English with me. Anyway, before I could get up from the couch where I was watching the World Cup matches the situation was solved and I didn't want to sound nosy.

I got home yesterday in the middle of the evening, on time to unpack my bags, prepare my snacks for the week and gather more videos for Estonian and Georgian. One of the three series I watch dubbed in Georgian is getting harder to find, at least a working one. It seems one studio does the dubbing, holds the copyright and makes it available for free at their site, but the search is a bit chaotic; the other sites mirror from that one and the episodes keep being shut down. I could watch them on Netflix but not on Georgian dub, for sure (why not Netflix Georgia? There are already one-two studios that dub everything very quickly in Georgian, I'm impressed). Well, at least now I can put my home computer to repair

Lately I've been through one sort of oppressive anxiety about the large amount of resources I have come through for languages I'm still not learning yet or at least haven't reached basic reading or audiobook listening-fluency. I feel like I should download everything before it disappears or I'm geo-block for content or even for purchase (in the case of Scandinavia for example, where you usually need a local address). I don't have either the time or the diskspace for organizing this sort of stuff, but I'd like to do so at least for the Romanian audiobooks. I'm really looking forward to a more entertaining and intuitive language learning in 2019, and whichever language has the content I'm looking forward to read not only for language learning's sake really calls up my wanderlust.

Rick's musings on the Gathering being repetitive and Josquin's short-termed withdrawal from the forum left me thinking a lot about how my life would be without language learning. One thing is certain: I'd have to find a way to spend all the day hours intelectually distracted or the least worse would be a headache at the end of each day. On the other hand, I'm putting too much anxiety at my work - anxiety in the sense of excess of future. I'm always looking forward to when I'll reach this or that level in a language in order to be able to just enjoy native media, and I'm struggling to find a balance between optimizing my time and still having fun. As I have trouble with idle time as well, simply cutting off 2 hours on my routine wouldn't solve the issue, it's a matter of finding a balance, maybe spending more time on a few tasks during the day - I did that on Friday and it worked.

Having noticed that Clozemaster keeps pushing mastered sentences in Norwegian and rewarding me only the lowest points for them, I decided I'd at least work on the unmastered ones meanwhile and work my way till finishing. So I'm working only on the lower level by now, instead of Random. That will also make the sessions more effective as the current level is about the one I need, with frequent words I can understand but haven't turned into active vocabulary yet.

More speed reading in German. Also, dubbed watching with subtitles in L1-only is forcing me to pay more attention to speech, and so impoving my overall comprehension.

Duolingo Hebrew is becoming vocabulary-intense again, especially verbs I'm not familiar with. Time to put it on hold for a while and focus on Clozemaster (which I do much less often than I wanted to because of lack of TTS). I did Duolingo Russian (I will advance the level 1-lessons to level 2) and Speakly.me, but neglected Clozemaster mostly.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I had the best Norwegian-audiobook evening ever. I could understand full scenes from the story. Had it a more linear narration, I could probably follow it. I'll know the answer when I start a new bookm but overall I'm happy that standard read bokmål is becoming transparent.

I've been following through FB the posts of a Georgian who created an YT channel with Georgian lessons. It started all with the basics, but I've just noticed that the second dialogue has been posted - it's all-Georgian with double subtitles, Georgian and English. Even though the subjects covered are basic, the speech itself is fully conversational, not abridged or simplified, so it serves intermediate level learners as well as beginners. Much like the Easy Language series. I highly recommend it to people who are looking forward to becoming serious learners, like Systematiker:



I managed to install ADE on my Android phone, but I'm not allowed to install it at the desktop. The old iPad simply crashes when I try to download it, maybe too little memory to handle Greek characters. SO i'll be enjoying the Spanish novel translated into Greek, which I paid quite a few tenths of euros for, on a tiny smartphone screen, all thanks to DRM. Pretty much outrageous. Tried removing it again on my home computer, to no success.

I've been procrastinating a bit those days when I've arrived earlier. It takes me almost an hour before I actually start studying, by watching the Estonian soap opera. It's no problem for my schedule, but it might be better to distribute this random browsing alongside the day instead of concentrating it on the early morning.

Breaking News: I found a workaround. A portable ADE version, which I managed to run on the desktop computer here. Light, easy and works fully. Time to enjoy Greek books!

Quick Norwegian question: I wonder why the plural of the adjective is used after "Ingen" in this predicative sentence:

Han var alt annet enn hellig.

Ingen er hellige.

Finished "Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé. A good, mild drama. My list of French films might come to an end, at least the ones I'm reading from the suggestions on a website. I usually avoid dubbed films on that list, but Zero Theorem seems my cup of tea and I wouldn't have the time for watching it outside of language study (I don't watch films in any other languages) and I might just forget about it in another situation, so why not take the chance? Will do the same with the animated movie Rise of the Guardians, which I can always rewatch later with the girls if I ever remember it again.

Clozemaster web has had another update. Now you can chose listening (only for pro) or speaking practice (only on Chrome) besides just vocbaulary. Pro users can also play rounds with sentences other than 10, or infinite ones. It's a bit less intuitive because you have to click the drop-down menu for choosing text input, instead of just hitting the button below. I'm playing Norwegian level by level and it's perhaps too easy, I should go back to random tomorrow.

Still thinking I'm neglecting Indonesian, and Assimil is too steep, but there's not really much I can do now, other than reviewing Clozemaster. There is no other resource I feel like doing. It's still not the time for reviewing+resuming Indonesianpod101, as I'm much less experienced in Indonesian than in Hebrew.

I forgot to read the missing pages in Spanish yesterday, after reading a bit on the bus. I caught up today by filling up yesterday's quota and reading today's one, which I usually don't do, because I had enough time and my mind wasn't fed up with Spanish, as the non-fiction book I've been reading had a chapter with only pictures and captions. I'm enjoying Mario Vargas Llosa but it sounds too much like home. Moreover, I'm looking forward to starting the sci-fi novel I bought.

Found Enid Blyd's books in Indonesian! That's great. I found a couple of books of hers at my children's kindergarten and took a picture of their cover: I always do this in the search for new books for older children/young adult fiction. Then I searched my sources and found that several of them have been translated into Indonesian. That can be a good early native material, before reading Percy Jackson. There was one book in Modern Greek too, but in Greek I'm spoiled for fun, as I can read my to-read list in Greek itself, with audiobooks.

I decided to slow down in Hebrew as it's going ahead in vocabulary, even if not in grammar, when compared to the Routledge Course that focuses on teaching grammar with limited vocabulary. So, today I went back to the earlier lessons and reached level two in one of them. That's better than using Memrise. I did the same with Russian again, looking forward to moving faster on Russian so I can do actual translation into L2 at a level closer to intermediate.

[Mista]

Quick Norwegian question: I wonder why the plural of the adjective is used after "Ingen" in this predicative sentence:

Han var alt annet enn hellig.

Ingen er hellige.

Usually, in modern usage, if you have a noun following immediately after ingen, it will be in the plural. So you can understand the sentence as Ingen (mennesker) er hellige. You can, however, also find the singular after ingen, but in that case it will be either a) older language, b) bureaucratic or academic language, c) abstract, or d) a common saying or slogan. Examples that would fit several of these points are Ingen sak er for liten and Ingen utfordring er for stor.

[Expugnator]

@Mista: Thanks for the explanations. I remembered now that German has 'keine'

Yesterday I almost reached completion in Clozemaster: I did the rounds for all languages plus text input rounds for Chinese and Russian (only German and Greek were missing).

Today's Mandarin listening-reading was a bit lighter. The page with the text was failing to load, so I was reading in Portuguese and listening in Mandarin, and I noticed I would hardly miss a word. Even when I resumed listening-reading, I could follow the text in real time.

I went back to 'Random, text input' at Norwegian and I didn't notice much difference from doing first non-mastered level. Looks like I'm starting to consolidate after repetition. Then I remembered I'm supposed to work on the earlier non-mastered levels, as part of my second sets of rounds, together with doing text input for Chinese, Russian, German and Greek. I'll do it as long as I have time.

I figured out I have two free listening-only slots. I'm happy with the results of adding Grand Bien Vous Fasse to my desktop-sitting-listening-only slot, so I thought I might find something else for the times when I walk to the bakery for having a snack and when I drive home in the middle of the evening the days I give classes, while the radios are playing the governmental program. It could be the same material for both. I'm about to finish my current Norwegian audiobook and then I might go back to French audiobook novels again, and so I can leave low-priority Norwegian audiobooks for these occasional listening slots. Or start German. I still find it too soon for adding extensive listening for German, but I'm happy with the results brought to Norwegian, even with a difficult audiobook. I could for example do extensive listening of translated audiobooks while doing only native German listening-reading at the desktop. That was the point when I got some audiobooks several months ago, and I just thought I was ready for Norwegian and not for German. Anyway, we'll see. It will also depend on the availability of resources for either language. My purchases for Norwegian will still be reserved for listening-reading properly, at the desktop, having a more thorough access to the story.

J'ai écouté dans Grand Bien Vous Fasse qu'à partir des trois ans le goût des enfants est stabilisé. Alors, il faut diversifier l'alimentation des enfants avant cet âge. On fait ce qui est possible chez nous. Les filles mangent beaucoup de légumes et on évite les sucrés.

This is the age of no-subtitles! After starting an audiobook in Norwegian, I dropped L2-subtitles while watching German and now the automatically-generated subtitles for Лунтик didn't work for today's episode on Youtube, and I managed to follow the full episode without them.

Today's and the next episode from Grand Bien Vous Fasse's archives should have transcripts because they deal with very sensitive topics: how to educate children for eating with variety and whether or not one should still drink milk.

I'm back to Clozemaster Indonesian with TTS. It works on Chrome. hebrew is the only who that only works at iOs. Some key words to Indonesian are starting to stick, which leaves me more optimist towards the language. Maybe I'll get back to pod101 sooner than planned, for consolidating the earlier levels.

A productive day with tasks finishing a bit earlier, but the remaining time was spent mostly on sentence-method: Duolingo and Clozemaster. I do have the feeling I'll get to a point where I'll really feel like starting something different at the end of the day after going through all the language learning.

[Expugnator]

Managed to keep the streak for all languages on Clozemaster yesterday. Still no TTS Hebrew, doing it on Android only. No text-input for the extra languages either.

Finished my translated novel in Russian. I was reading Guillaume Musso's Parce que je t'aime. Not a bad one for his standards. Also, one more book to the list of the books I've read in French, as I obviously don't plan to read it in French again. Now I'm resuming A series of unfortunate events, with the hope that Count Olaf sounds less despicable in Russian than in Georgian. If i notice the language isn't that useful at that stage, I'll return to that chicklit and the likes for Russian again, because it did wonders in terms of vocabulary.

I knew this band before I knew French properly, in the mid 2000's. They disbanded and seem to have come back:



From the earlier albums I recommend Respire and La Mort du Peuple.

Today's Indonesian lesson was short but interesting. Pity that I was behind the schedule and couldn't pay more attention to it. You were supposed to translate from informal Indonesian into formal Indonesian. It's a lesson to be reviewed every now and then.

I might admit I got distracted today. Too much going on around. I'm glad I managed to do the Routledge Hebrew lesson, which usually takes long. It helps OCR-ing the initial text and putting it on GT, so I have it more like an Assimil lesson. At the exercises there's not much new vocabulary, so overall I can finish rather quickly when there are few exercises. Anyway, tomorrow is no study day as I'm only going to work half-time. I expect to take care of some pending tasks.

[Lysander]

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.

You are a language beast, and the bolded is totally untrue You have 4+ years as it starts late so nobody melts playing football during Gulf summer.

Obviously, you'd have to give up a lot of time with other languages, but you could get to B1 Gulf Arabic in FOUR years with no issue, I am sure

Anyway, carry on. Your log is really cool. As someone learning a bit of your native language, it is just neat for there to be a Brazilian here!

The overall Assimil course is the "paulista" accent. The last few days featured dialogues with accents from Minas Gerais, the "northeast," and then Rio de Janiero. Just curious, would your accent fall into any of these buckets? I flipped through the rest of the course, and the only other accent introduced is of a Portuguese person later in lesson 80!

[Expugnator]

You have 4+ years as it starts late so nobody melts playing football during Gulf summer.

Obviously, you'd have to give up a lot of time with other languages, but you could get to B1 Gulf Arabic in FOUR years with no issue, I am sure

Actually the path would be Hebrew to B1 -> MSA to B1 -> Gulf Arabic to B1. I could drop Hebrew for Arabic, but I can't see myself starting with an Arabic dialect instead of MSA out of the blue.

The overall Assimil course is the "paulista" accent. The last few days featured dialogues with accents from Minas Gerais, the "northeast," and then Rio de Janiero. Just curious, would your accent fall into any of these buckets? I flipped through the rest of the course, and the only other accent introduced is of a Portuguese person later in lesson 80!

My accent is baiano. It's southeast of Bahia, so it's weakened when compared to people from Salvador. I say "trem", I prefer the tu form for imperative but I never use tu itself, rather 'cê'. In terms of intonation patterns, the baiano accent resembles a lot the Northeastern one, but not so much in terms of individual sounds. Anyway, the isoglossa goes further south so the North of Minas Gerais still speak with the baiano accent, though they'll surrender to death they don't do so. I keep meeting people from Montes Claros who sound way more baiano than I do now.

Having been living in the capital of Minas for over 15 years, I can make a rather neutral accent in terms of intonation but if I do so it's not on purpose, just unconsciously adapting to the environment. Most people fail to figure out I'm from Bahia unless I start talking fast or loud.

As for Assimil, I don't think they made the right choice doing it overall paulistano accent. The standard is basically Rio accent with a smoother intonation and no "s" turning into "sh" at the end of syllables. Which is quite like the way people from Espírito Santo speak.

I owe you some more frequent visits to your log, Lysander!

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Yesterday was my day off, so no language study day. I did have some work, as I had to finish two translations. I also did the full program of Clozemaster, including Hebrew with TTS and text input for Mandarin, Greek, Russian and German. I'm really happy that the Greek and German ones match exactly the level I need and have been a true confidence boost.

This is the extension of how Clozemaster is boycotting my mastering of the Norwegian deck and my score, by forcing me to replay words that have been already mastered and giving me the 0%-25% score on them:



Other than that, I listened to an Italian podcast again on Sunday, after so many weeks. I read a bit ahead in non-fiction, but not much apart from reading the forum, trying to catch up.

Finally started A series of unfortunate events, book 4, listening-reading in Russian. I might need some time to get used to it, so it's harder than translated Guillaume Musso so far. Also, the font is smaller which means I'm reading more from it in order to reach my daily quota of 3 pages. Nonetheless, I believe this will soon turn into a fun and effective exercise. My Russian needs a final confidence boost wave through the end of this year, as I'm really looking forward to my second Slavic languages. In times like these, I envy Systematiker.

This is the day I finish Language Transfer Greek, the new course! I liked it a lot, more than the first edition. It focuses mostly on syntax and verbal morphology, though. Don't expect to learn to 'speak' from it alone. Following the latest trends, I'm not replacing it with any other textbook; first because I don't think explicit learning will add to my knowledge at this stage, as I need more contact with the language; second because the other option would be pod101, but it's still too intense at the intermediate level, and I'm better off just listening-reading to novels where I get more repetition. So, I'm going to start listening-reading 5 pages instead of 4 from Dan Brown's novel, and if all goes well I might increase the quota as much as possible as long as I keep it productive. After all, audiobooks are my main source of comprehensible input for Greek.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to doing other Language Transfer courses, though always worried about taking a course that's not Mihalis' native language. But then Swahili has 103 tracks now! No more excuses, really! 2019 looks promising with Swahili, Czech, Catalan, Romanian, Esperanto, Swedish and maybe Guarani and Turkish (well, I have six months left for deciding which other languages to drop).

Hebrewpod lesson 20 is already challenging enough, even after finishing Assimil. And this is the first level, supposed to be easy. That says a lot about how some pod101 levels are rather vague.

I'm really lost about Indonesian. Assimil alone is never enough, given its steep curve and vocabulary profusion. Even more so now that after lesson 50 there is no more word-by-word translation. My only source of comprehensible input now is Clozemaster, so it's about overmastering sentences now. I don't have any other resources that fit my exact needs.

I've had a persistent headache most of the afternoon, maybe it's the brain trying to adjust after 4 days without studying. I've used OCR a bit more for Hebrew, instead of trying to read everything on my own: this time I've also OCR-ed an exercise. It's not so harmful for learning as I'm still looking at the original text and trying to understand it.

[Expugnator]

Today is another atypical day. Only half-time. I'll try do study as much as possible.

The prediction feature on Clozemaster Web has been helpful to my Norwegian. Instead of simply giving up, I can try some words and also write part of them while I come up with the rest. Today I remembered the Norwegian word for 'grades' after remembering first only the initial letter.

I'm glad I finished one series on Yabla Mandarin, 14 videos on Pu Er Cha. Nothing against them, but the videos were a bit too technical. Today's one was also about tea but more relevant language-wise.

Started reading 5 pages in Modern Greek instead of 4. So far, no big impact in my schedule as I am saving the minutes from Language Transfer Greek which I finished.

Hebrewpod101 Absolute Beginner lesson 21 starts to introduce the bnaim, something Assimil overlooked. This 'absolute' in the label is definitely relative. And so lesson 22 has the future. The good news is that this is only the first level, and since I had this headstart with Assimil and yet another Assimil edition to study (the old one), I'm having plenty of resources for building up my A2 Hebrew knowledge as I get there. Future conjugation doesn't seem a nightmare for someone who's used to Georgian, though. In Georgian it's commonplace to add both preffixes and suffixes in order to conjugate a verb (One more argument for Systematiker to take Georgian, as so far he thinks Hebrew and Greek have complicated verbal systems).

I was held why longer than expected and as a result I had the most productive morning ever. Only Indonesian and Routledge Hebrew left for the evening, plus the readings in Spanish and Italian. Even if I don't make it, it's still a lot done so far, unexpectedly.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday was a day of completion. I struggled to find even 30 minutes of desk study while at home (and I got home at 1 pm), but I managed to finish the Indonesian and the Routledge Hebrew lessons between 8h30 and 9h00 PM. It reminds me of kuji who finds it so hard to do proper study at home. Fortunately, I could use hidden moments in order to finish the reading (Spanish, Italian, Spanish again) and do the Clozemaster up to the text input for all languages. No Speakly.me or Duolingo, though. I'm prioritizing Clozemaster because I'm happy with the results for whatever language I manage to review from the earlier lessons as text input.

The only resource that remained untouched was the Norwegian audiobook, as I only had one commute back home instead of two, when I listened to a good deal from the final disc of the Italian audiobook, as I got stuck in the traffic for several minutes.

Finished Tintentod! With this, the Tintenherz trilogy. What a relief. Now I'm free to pursuit other texts in German, in the hope of one day being able to read extensively in the language, or even listen to an audiobook that way.

With today's lesson, there is one left for review at the Absolute Beginner level. I'll do that one next and then stick to 1 lesson a day again, even if I'll be technically reviewing the next level as well, since I haven't retained much anyway.

The day was supposed to be much calmer, but turned chaotic. I could barely make it to Routledge Hebrew, and SRS was left behind.

[Expugnator]

I could do all languages on Clozemaster yesterdat, but only little Mandarin on text input, no Greek, German on Russian. Maybe I should make them a priority at the weekend, as I hardly ever have time for the full set of languages anyway.

Today is going to be a busier day, with an inverted schedule. Watching only in the morning, then reading and SRS in the afternoon. I have yet to prepare one lecture and one class for tomorrow morning, so let's see how things come along.

I got a real gem, which is The Berlitz Self-Teacher: Hebrew. It's an old-school textbook but totally self-learner friendly, with transcription and translation and vocabulary slowly introduced by topics. Definitely a good resource for consolidating an A2 stage. I'm spoiled for good resources in Hebrew now!

Greek is starting to flow. It was really worth deciding to read one extra page a day, now that I'm not doing explicit studying.

The afternoon was a success. I had plenty of time for reading - could even have left more for reading by then. Also time for the full Clozemaster set plus Speakly.me. No Duolingo because I couldn't listen. I just forgot the Spanish reading, but I caught up later.

I read both German and Russian without audio, both new starts. This time, Russian seemed easier, maybe it's Lemon Snicket that writes more reader-friendly than Andreas Eschbach.

At Greek Clozemaster, all the cards at all levels are viewed. Now I'm going to do it at random,, multiple choice, while working on mastering the cards from the bottom levels as text input. I expect this to be pretty much productive.

The day was intense and there is a lot going on nowadays, the type that drains energy. I'm hoping for the best, hope I can keep my mind clear and get over it all.