Nótaí galaxyrocker - Ancient Celtic Languages, (Old) French, Latin, Old English

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tangleweeds
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby tangleweeds » Mon Sep 14, 2020 12:41 am

galaxyrocker wrote:I'm almost done teaching myself from Pinter's A Book of Abstract Algebra .
I love that book! So much fun, and I found it quite clear too. Not that the problems weren’t interestingly challenging, just nice and lucid with no wasted chatter.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Sep 27, 2020 5:53 pm

It's been a while since I've had an update. The school I'm working in decided to bring students back in early, and it's been super stressful trying to keep things organized for them as well as just in general. I've been keeping up with Anki, but that's about it. Still not getting much exposure to Japanese or Irish even.

For those of y'all who are doing MIA, or Anki in general, what do you think of leech cards? Part of me hates having them, and I want to brute-force my way through it, but I know it's suggested to just leave them. It's quite frustrating, really. I also really need to focus more on mnemonics to help me remember some of the cards, but I already find Anki boring, so I often don't do it unless one obviously springs to mind. Any advice on how to do those? Part of me is tempted to pick up the original RTK and just go through that with his patterns and see if they stick any better. Otherwise, I might get around to reading Genki this week, especially as the JET application should open before too much longer. And finally try to find some non-anime Japanese shows; I saw a thread about it on reddit a few weeks back, might try to dig that up.

Otherwise, with Irish, I've really dropped the ball. I haven't updated my blog in a few weeks, unfortunately, as I've just been so busy it's been difficult to find time to do it...or energy when I do have the time. Mentally draining activities are the worse, and I'd almost rather be physically exhausted by work every day so that I can focus on mental stuff at home, as opposed to the opposite.
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tangleweeds
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 7:09 pm
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
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beginner: Irish
clearing cobwebs: Japanese
on the shelf: French, Latin
wanderlust: Norwegian, Vietnamese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=705
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby tangleweeds » Sun Sep 27, 2020 10:02 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:For those of y'all who are doing MIA, or Anki in general, what do you think of leech cards? Part of me hates having them, and I want to brute-force my way through it, but I know it's suggested to just leave them.
I feel the same way about leeches, and tend to keep them around. I think the healthier response was when, at one point, I just made a leech deck, irrespective of language. Whenever I wanted to bang my head against a wall, there they all were. I think that the change in context might have helped a few more stick.

galaxyrocker wrote:Mentally draining activities are the worse, and I'd almost rather be physically exhausted by work every day so that I can focus on mental stuff at home, as opposed to the opposite.
Absolutely. Teaching school has been exhausting for everyone this year, herding cats with Zoom fatigue. Or do you get the full in-person stress?

Probably irritating helpful suggestion: have you tried finding something a little more physically exhausting to balance the mental exhaustion, and burn off frustration/build up physcial energy? Even walking might help, and eventually, you might even sneak some listening in with that [what's the suggestion equivalent of, "Asking for a friend"? My own exercise routine has gone to crap since we had all that crazy smoke here in Portland].
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Sep 27, 2020 10:11 pm

tangleweeds wrote:
Probably irritating helpful suggestion: have you tried finding something a little more physically exhausting to balance the mental exhaustion, and burn off frustration/build up physcial energy? Even walking might help, and eventually, you might even sneak some listening in with that [what's the suggestion equivalent of, "Asking for a friend"? My own exercise routine has gone to crap since we had all that crazy smoke here in Portland].


We're in-person again as of last week, with alternating groups of students; teachers had to attend every day before that, sadly, as many parents don't think we can work from home and that we were just mooching off them. But I have been much more physically active since March. I had a routine surgery on the 17th, and was walking again by the 22nd. Didn't miss my 10k steps a day until earlier this month. Often many more. As soon as the gyms opened up, I went back, though i haven't been in almost two weeks now due to just being so busy and it being too crowded in the evenings to get anything done without waiting forever. I'm going to try to get back into my waking up at 4:30 routine, but it's tough to wake up that early, no matter when I go to bed lol
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crush
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Sun Sep 27, 2020 11:09 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:For those of y'all who are doing MIA, or Anki in general, what do you think of leech cards? Part of me hates having them, and I want to brute-force my way through it, but I know it's suggested to just leave them.
I have my leech threshold very low for cards that are hard to do. My sentence recognition cards have a leech threshold of 3 i think. Straight up delete forever. For my DJT-style audio cards, they recommend just pushing through the leeches. As the cards are very quick to do, a couple seconds at most, i've kept them around. I'm noticing some cards haunting me though and am considering just deleting these leeches as well. I'd prefer to be able to input a high number of new cards and let the ones that stick stick and the ones that don't go.

For RTK i think i set a relatively low leech level too, but can't remember now. I deleted that deck a while back. Those characters are supposed to be the most common ones anyway, so when you start reading you should be seeing them all over the place.

I'm experimenting with leaving leeches in my deck and not suspending/deleting them, but i think i prefer going through my reviews quickly. The main disadvantage is that mining the cards is more time consuming than using the subs2srs decks i was using before.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Jan 03, 2021 10:34 pm

I had stayed fairly consistent with Anki until the New Years trip I went on with friends...But I was able to get caught up without too much of a problem, thankfully; only missed two days worth of Japanese cards.

That said, I should be nearing the end of RRTK, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do afterwards. I don't really have many goals in 2021 as I'm not sure exactly what 2021 has in store as I've got some big life/career decisions to make that I'm not sure how I will make. I'm not sure if I want to continue Japanese either, even though I applied for the JET program or if I want to refocus on Spanish, or just really try to perfect my Irish.

So, I'm not really going to make any goals, and I'll see what happens from there. I'm going to try to be consistent with at least doing a little bit of something every day, even if it's just Irish on Discord/Telegram, though I hope to get back into reading Irish too. And Spanish as well.

As for Japanese, I still haven't actually begun the 'immersion' part of 'mass immersion'. It doesn't help that I don't watch much TV in general, and prefer to read. Maybe I'll find an N5 graded reader and just start reading that way, learning the grammar and kanji as I go, then focus on learning to listen afterwards. Or maybe it'll spark a desire to focus on listening. Hell, maybe I'll go do a Japanese class over the summer instead of focusing on Irish/Spanish/whatever else. It's really all up in the air, and I'm super indecisive.
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tangleweeds
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby tangleweeds » Sun Jan 03, 2021 11:22 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:As for Japanese, I still haven't actually begun the 'immersion' part of 'mass immersion'. It doesn't help that I don't watch much TV in general, and prefer to read. Maybe I'll find an N5 graded reader and just start reading that way, learning the grammar and kanji as I go, then focus on learning to listen afterwards..
A similar (and in my case pretty deep) disinterest in TV is a huge stumbling block to me too as far as MIA approaches go, which is probably why I tent to lean toward more structured learning materials.

I absirb grannar as easily as I absorb any programming language, and SRS-ing vocab (or any kind of self-quizzing) is fun for me, so textbooks work really well in my case. The staged dialogues spark no less interest in me than the vast majority of TV.

Once I've got a bit of grounding in the basics, graded readers provide a nice n+1 to move forward with (again, no less boring to me than TV, and I progress faster). But sometimes using the audio as listening practice, with the text to fall back on to clear up questions, is more productive for me than reading, as that tends to come more easily in my case.

P.S. Nice to see you back!
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Jan 03, 2021 11:53 pm

tangleweeds wrote:A similar (and in my case pretty deep) disinterest in TV is a huge stumbling block to me too as far as MIA approaches go, which is probably why I tent to lean toward more structured learning materials.


Yeah, exactly. In fact, upon returning to my flashcards today, I've found I'm just...not that interested in them. The whole thing was designed to use the RRTK approach, and I just can't do that approach. Honestly, I think I'm going to quit doing them and maybe get an N5 graded reader and start working through Genki with it, while doing as much audio immersion as I can stand. But, really, there's just not much I want to focus on when I can't understand the language. It also doesn't help that the most easily accessible material is all anime, which I also don't really have much interest in. There's a few shōnen manga I enjoy reading, but I can't handle the anime adaptations of them. I'll likely finish my flashcards for the day, and maybe the next few days, but I see myself dropping them and moving to something more structured quite soon, if I keep up Japanese at all.

I'd love to, because I'd love to be able to read the literature and older stuff in the language, and it opens access to a whole new world of ideas. But I also don't know when I'll ever get the chance to visit Japan (even if I get accepted into the JET program this year, I'm not sure if I'll do it; it's one of the major life decision choices I feel I'll have to make, along with returning to Ireland, etc) or for how long, etc. so who really knows what's going to happen? It's all quite up in the air (and I'm horrible at making decisions!)
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tangleweeds
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Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
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wanderlust: Norwegian, Vietnamese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=705
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby tangleweeds » Mon Jan 04, 2021 6:31 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:In fact, upon returning to my flashcards today, I've found I'm just...not that interested in them. The whole thing was designed to use the RRTK approach, and I just can't do that approach.
Again, same here. RTK simply doesn't work for me, but the book Let's Learn Kanji, which is based on radicals, recurring non-radical elements, and simple kanji that end up inside other kanji does. All of that enables chunking which helps me distinguish what would otherwise be vexingly similar complicated kanji far more easily.

ETA: I also find Minna no Nihongo more deeply educational than Genki, because most of the books' being all Japanese helps me stay immersed in Japanese writing system, given the simple nuisance of having to open the relevant English language supplement in cases when I really could figure out the Japanese on my own.

But in general, that approach works better for me, which I why I like Norsk, Nordmenn og Norge for Norwegian, as the English language grammar explanations and glossary are segregated away from the otherwise all Norwegian text. Having the two languages intermingled seems to make my brain lazy? distracted? whatever, just not fully immersed.
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crush
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:21 pm

Nice to see you back! I have struggled with the same thing. I don't mind Anki so long as it's not several hundred cards a day. Generally 100 or so is easily manageable for me (in Japanese, which takes more effort to review) so that's what i aim for. If i can feasibly finish it in 20-30 minutes, that's fine.

I'm still struggling with finding things to watch that are interesting. What i ended up doing for a while was watching Japanese dubs of western animated movies i've seen (Kung Fu Panda, Toy Story, etc.) and those are both more comprehensible and more enjoyable for me.

There have been a couple anime that i really thoroughly enjoyed, most of them were just to get immersion time in. I'm now at the point where i can follow along with a show even if i don't understand everything, so it's easier to watch different stuff. However, my comprehension rate is still too low to really enjoy things, and that's a big barrier for me as i don't really like anime and never watched it before. I'm more interested in RPGs (but at the same time want to wait until i can fully enjoy them to play them). So like you i've turned to books, books are definitely more interesting but getting to the point where it's fun and relaxing to read is a huge hurdle, one i'm still working on. But in general i do enjoy reading in Japanese, it's just not effortless.

That being said, i feel like this past year and a half of "study" has been really laid back, i'm not sure that it's the most efficient use of my time for my goals (which isn't to "master" the language or to pass off as Japanese when i speak/write), however i will say that it was mostly effortless. There were a few anime i had to push myself through that i probably should've dropped, but overall investing about an hour and a half a day, 20-30 minutes of Anki study and 30-60 minutes of immersion, has taken me pretty far. Nowhere near what folks immersing 5-6+ hours a day (and who love anime/manga and would be watching anime/reading manga anyways just in English/whatever their native language is) have, but at least i didn't have to push myself to study everyday. Studying Anki + grammar and filling out exercises for an hour and a half a day would've been a much larger burden.
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