I think a key question moving forward for me is just "how much Persian did you hear today?"
PersianVocabI’ve noticed that I now have over 11,000 cards in Anki and I’m adding about 50-100 a week. I’m only unpiling about 10 new cards a day. Between the different decks, I currently have there are quite a few duplicate terms (frequency dictionaries vs what I add to my working deck…) so I’ll have to look into that.
I’ve now done over 16000 reviews which exceeds what I ever did for German. This might not be the most effective but that’s also due to the process of internalizing a different script. It’s still going to take me a long time to read at a reasonable (chunking) speed.
But quick math - 11,000 cards @ 10 cards per day is … 3 years.
I’m not going to do these Anki cards for 3 years. Yikes. They are mostly cards for early learning and once I feel that I’m ok with that, I’ll definitely be changing my strategy.
So how am I managing my lake of notes so I don’t drown?
1. Continue adding notes for Assimil, TYB, and Chai podcast. As these are items I’ve learned and want to maintain. Focus on this. This is only about 1200 cards or 600 notes. not overwhelming. Build that up as I finish the learning material. That is really enough material to keep me busy for now. The target here is about 2500 cards which should be manageable this year.
2. If I need more, I’ll add Persian 625, Goethe Verlag, or one of the frequency dictionaries decks.
3. Every once in a while I’ll add a few cards to my active pile from the frequency decks to just really begin to remove or push out the low-value high-frequency words I already know.
4. About half of the cards I add are now sentences or chunks. After I finish with 1) I want to really reduce the number of cards with English or French in them and try to have image/Persian or only Persian-Persian cards. Am I dreaming?
ListeningBasically, I’m focusing on Assimil and Chai and Conversation.
Definitely need to step this up at some point. I need to think about this.
OtherThis weekend, as I mentioned above I was in Paris. While visiting my oldest, we talked about some Persian elements and ended up discussing the idea of taking a trip to Iran. Not sure that will be happening, but we’ve agreed that it could be a destination in 3+ years. Meanwhile, she taught me a few phrases she had learned in Kurdistan and we spent Saturday code-switching as we walked the city. I came home with blisters, bad shoe choice.
We had dinner at a pizzeria near her apartment where the owner speaks to her in Hebrew. And while we were eating a couple sitting next to us asked me what she had ordered. while she was away from the table. They asked in English, but since I had just heard them speak German, we quickly ended up speaking in German and my daughter came back she blamed me of a) talking to strangers b) showing off. But I swore I hadn’t started it!
Morning brunch, I did a little bit of Persian and she sent a photo to her sisters.
C: Dad studying.
L: Mood - Dad saying random things in a new language every 3 weeks.
C:
Blistered feet and all we went to the other side of town to check out the Persian bookstore and I picked up a learning book for reading comprehension. The photo in the previous post is actually the books I have here before I went to Paris. I’m definitely not at the point where I can use this, but it’s material for later. No more books until I leave!
Back in Lille, my youngest had her prior language exchange friend visiting from Germany to practice her French and we talked a little about her plans. She’s involved in hosting a refugee family that speaks Dinka and Swahili and I shared a few resources, including this site.
I’m falling behind with the SC work for German but I think I can catch up a little later this month.
: Persian: Assimil 43
: Persian: Assimil 2nd Wave 13
: Persian: Teach Yourself 17
: Persian: Chai and Conversation 37
: Persian: Anki
: SC: German Books
: SC: German Films