zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jan 16, 2019 7:27 pm

Deinonysus wrote:Could I ask what drew you to Tzotzil rather than one of the larger Maya languages such as Yucatec or K'iche'?
Yes, of course!

Because I'm more interested in the Chiapas region. I spent time in San Juan Chamula & San Cristóbal Las Casas when I was young and heard Tzotzil/Ch'ol spoken by the local weaver community. While the K'iche' speaking people tend to be further south in a region I am less interested in. Yucatec is primarily spoken in the Yucatan.

By the numbers, I'd be more interested in Nahuatl. And by pure fascination, probably Lacandon and Wixárika but those population are too small. And I'd like to know more about Purepecha and Zapoteca languages ...

Tzotzil is one language where I've amassed .enough. some learning material. :?
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I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 21, 2019 10:19 am

It's been a week where I've been able to mostly complete my time on all my languages. I'm pretty happy about that. And I've studied every of the week for at least 30 minutes.

I'd like to complete the next two weeks with the same focus and then I'll feel I can go back to my iTalki lessons more comfortably. Lot's of review to do for Hebrew and Tibetan.

I did not do my hour of recorded German or the 1000 words of writing. Those are improvements for this week.

Boring numbers below.



Time log

Hebrew - Task goal (2 hrs / week)
- 14.1 Anki 14 min
- 13.1 Shtisel 31 min
- 15.1 Anki 5 min
- 15.1 Shtisel 30 min
- 16.1 Anki 15 min
- 16.1 FSI Lesson 3 55 min R/W/L
- 16.1 Clozemaster 10 min
- 17.1 Memrise 20 min

Hebrew Total 160 min

German - Task goal (2 hrs / week)
- 15.1 Anki 21 min
- 18.1 elemantarfragen 65 min
- 18.1 Dw.de top thema 20 min
- 18.1 German interactions 22 min
- 18.1 Anki 8 min
German Total 136 min

Tibetan Task (2 hrs / week)
- 14.1 Anki 15 min
- 14.1 Review spelling / pronunciation / transliteration 30 min
- 16.1 Anki 15 min
- 17.1 Anki 10 min
- 18.1 Anki 5 min
Tibetan Total 65 min

Setswana - Task (1 hrs / week)
- 16.1 Memrise 15 min
- 17.1 Memrise 30 min
- 18.1 Memrise 40 min
- 19.1 Memrise 60 min - now all time 1st on leaderboard
- 20.1 Memrise 80 min
Setswana Total 225 min

Prep Time
- 14.1 Anki added new Tibetan Spelling card format and populated 30 cards with sound 60 min
- 16.1 Audacity tagging and thinking about Anki for FSI Hebrew 80 min
Prep Time - Total time 140 min



My Current Daily Pick List
Hebrew - Anki > Clozemaster > FSI > Assimil > Shtisel > Other
German - Anki > DW.de > Elemantarfragen
Tibetan - Anki > MTL > ??
Setswana - Memrise > Anki > ??

[tags: #tagLangHE #tagLangTSN #tagLangDE #tagLangTIB]
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Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu Jan 24, 2019 7:09 pm

zenmonkey wrote:German is likely to be the harder of the three, an earlier focused start will get you along further, while not having to do maintenance and/or further learning of the other two languages concomitantly. My order was the exact opposite. :shock: German is taking forever...

Every other order can also make sense, but that's my logic above.

This quote is taken from the thread on the logical order to learn the languages Spanish, French and German, but since my reply is directed personally to you, I thought I’d put it in your log rather than cluttering up the original thread.

Have you considered that the reason you find German so hard might be because it’s your first real foreign language? From what you’ve told me, you grew up in Mexico and the US, so you have both Spanish and English as native languages. Maybe you didn’t learn English from infancy, but you still learned it pretty young. You also said that your parents used to speak French together as their “secret language”, so I assume you heard it often as a child and probably understood a good bit even if you didn’t speak it. So, when you decided to learn French as an adult, you not only had the advantages of being a speaker of another Romance language and English, you probably also had an advantage similar to that of a heritage speaker. You probably struggled a lot at first with speaking, but I imagine you understood a good bit, and you probably had or easily developed an ear for what sounds right because you’d heard it so much growing up. That makes German your first real, from-scratch, foreign language. And the first one is always hard. In my experience, the second and third are pretty tough too. I don’t know how many languages you have to learn before it actually gets easy. I’ll let you know when I get there.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:20 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:German is likely to be the harder of the three, an earlier focused start will get you along further, while not having to do maintenance and/or further learning of the other two languages concomitantly. My order was the exact opposite. :shock: German is taking forever...

Every other order can also make sense, but that's my logic above.

This quote is taken from the thread on the logical order to learn the languages Spanish, French and German, but since my reply is directed personally to you, I thought I’d put it in your log rather than cluttering up the original thread.

Have you considered that the reason you find German so hard might be because it’s your first real foreign language? From what you’ve told me, you grew up in Mexico and the US, so you have both Spanish and English as native languages. Maybe you didn’t learn English from infancy, but you still learned it pretty young. You also said that your parents used to speak French together as their “secret language”, so I assume you heard it often as a child and probably understood a good bit even if you didn’t speak it. So, when you decided to learn French as an adult, you not only had the advantages of being a speaker of another Romance language and English, you probably also had an advantage similar to that of a heritage speaker. You probably struggled a lot at first with speaking, but I imagine you understood a good bit, and you probably had or easily developed an ear for what sounds right because you’d heard it so much growing up. That makes German your first real, from-scratch, foreign language. And the first one is always hard. In my experience, the second and third are pretty tough too. I don’t know how many languages you have to learn before it actually gets easy. I’ll let you know when I get there.


All of that is true. Part of it is also environmental - I was in love with the French language and I easily submerged myself very quickly in a gigantic swath of music, literature, poetry. I'd lived within the French language very quickly and told people that I would leave the room if anything but French was spoken. I honestly submerged myself. Any language after that is going to be challenged and there is an internal push back because I already spend a lot of time with languages I love much more than newer L2s. German is nice and all that but where is my Apollinaire, my Dumas, my Jacques Brel? La Vie Reve des Anges? La Fée Carabine? I have a deep emotional commitment to French that I don't have to any newer language.

German may be my "first" from scratch successful language but I can certainly count on two hands all of the failed and semi-successful languages I've tried to learn... From "rebate" languages like Catalan, Occitan, Italian and Portuguese to other more opaque languages like Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi ... where somewhere early along the path I stopped.

German would be further along if I was actually spending time with this language. Treating it as true partner would speed things along. Unfortunately I'm an easily distracted something or other.

And I know this is just your attempt to get me to take on Norwegian and Japanese.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Week in review

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Jan 27, 2019 9:50 pm

This week I updated my Anki software (heart be still!) and added several add-ons. I also deleted about 900 cards (the movie Ghost Dog, German) and a deck (Croatian). The cards went because I did not find them very useful due to poor translations and incomplete content. I’m slowly catching back up on my Anki decks.

I am watching Shtisel, a series on Netflix in Hebrew (and some Yiddish!). It is about a religious family and how the younger Shtisel is going about finding a bride. It has the quality of both a soap opera, and a slow song of desire and self-deception. The orthodox culture is not my own at all, but the story telling and the basic human conflicts are truly rich. Works like this make me fall in love with the language. I've also set up two Hebrew lessons in Italki, starting in February, so I better pick up on my Anki review.

In German, I'm still looking for "awe" - that material that will once again make me love the language. I've got some great books in English that are translated to German and I'm seeing if that will work. If not, I'm going to go back to listening to Arto Paasilinna, translated into German --- I don't know if I have the written text?

Didn't hit my task goal this week in German or in Tibetan. Whoops! But I made up for it in Hebrew and Setswana. And even a bit of Portuguese.

Yesterday we had dinner with a Spanish English couple - she speaks English & German poorly, he speaks Spanish well but my partner doesn't so it was an evening of complete code switching between the languages. And their two daughters are completely comfortable in the 3 languages, so I purposely spoke to them in German to push myself.

I enjoyed my exchanges with rdearman (French) & brun ugle (Spanish / German) this week. I should set up some more exchange time.

Boring log below.


Time log

Hebrew - Task goal (2 hrs / week)
- 21.1 30 min review
- 22.1 5 min Anki
- 24.1 30 min Anki
- 24.1 50 min Shtisel
- 25.1 50 min Shtisel
- 27.1 50 min Shtisel

Anki: Hebrew from Scratch, Hebrew Alphabet, Hello Hello Father 

Hebrew Total 215 min

German - Task goal (2 hrs / week)
- 22.1 Anki 5 Min
- 24.1 Anki 15 min
- 25.1 Radio Bayern 2 Morning News 15 min
- 25.1 Exchange 30 min
- 26.1 Conversation 30 min

Anki : Movie, Song, Minimal Pairs
German Total 95 min

Tibetan Task (2 hrs / week)
- 22.1 Anki 2 Min
- 24.1 Anki 5 Min
Anki : MTL deck
Tibetan Total 7 min

Setswana - Task (1 hrs / week)
- 23.1 Memrise 30 min
- 24.1 Memrise 35 min
- 25.1 Memrise 50 min
- 26.1 Memrise 50 min
- 27.1 Memrise 40 min
Setswana Total 205 min

Portuguese - Task (?? hrs / week)
- 24.1 Anki 19 min
Anki : Assimil
Portuguese Total 19 min

Prep Time
- 24.1 Updated Anki and played around with add-ons 30 min
Prep Time - Total time 30 min



My Current Daily Pick List
Hebrew - Anki > Clozemaster > FSI > Assimil > Shtisel > Other
German - Anki > DW.de > Elemantarfragen
Tibetan - Anki > MTL > ??
Setswana - Memrise > Anki > ??

[tags: #tagLangHE #tagLangTSN #tagLangDE #tagLangTIB #tagMethodAnki]
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I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

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Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:15 am

Wait. Why did you have a Croatian deck? Are you learning Croatian?

I recommend Star Trek e-books in German. That’s what I’m reading right now. They are light and fun enough to make it easy to follow in spite of my weak German, and since they are e-books, I can easily look up all the words I want. I also read aloud. I’ve been reading Star Trek in German since I finished the book I was reading in Spanish, which according to the Super Challenge page was 10 days ago. I’ve definitely noticed an improvement in my ability to express myself.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:36 am

Brun Ugle wrote:Wait. Why did you have a Croatian deck? Are you learning Croatian?


Well, not any more. :) It was from a trip a few years back. My goal was minimum travel phrases.

I've been working off physical books - you are right, I should try a few ebooks or bilingual readers.
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Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
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Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Jan 28, 2019 11:15 am

zenmonkey wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:Wait. Why did you have a Croatian deck? Are you learning Croatian?


Well, not any more. :) It was from a trip a few years back. My goal was minimum travel phrases.

I've been working off physical books - you are right, I should try a few ebooks or bilingual readers.

Actually, my point was more that you should read Star Trek. Star Trek is fun! Back in high school, I used to always read Star Trek in class, with the book hidden below my desk or behind my textbook, fooling nobody. :)
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Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
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Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Iversen » Mon Jan 28, 2019 11:22 am

I only know Startrek from the TV shows - and only to a small extent, since it always has bothered me that the expeditions happened to run into exactly one planet with nasty Anglophone humanlike inhabitants per show. Come on... how likely is that? Most planets would be too hostile for life or only host lowlevel bacteria-like critters. But of course I liked ideas like the beam-me-up-Scotty machine and the warp drive because they made me think about the limitations of cosmology...

Science fiction and fantasy were actually the last two genres I could stand before I gave completely up reading literature. At least they gave me new worlds and not just our usual world rehashed. The third last genre was detective stories, but only if they had a plot that was as tightly knit as a sudoku or chess puzzle - and I got tired of elderly ladies and members of the English nobility who lived in peaceful surroundings where somebody constantly accidentally murdered a fellow human being in a way that could be unraveled by sheer logic like a puzzle. Too much of a coincidence ..
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:17 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:Actually, my point was more that you should read Star Trek. Star Trek is fun! Back in high school, I used to always read Star Trek in class, with the book hidden below my desk or behind my textbook, fooling nobody. :)


I'm a huge fan of sci-fi but I've always been a bit doubtful of Trek or Star Wars books. Are they canon?

Iversen wrote:Science fiction and fantasy were actually the last two genres I could stand before I gave completely up reading literature. At least they gave me new worlds and not just our usual world rehashed.


This is really what I still enjoy reading the most. My current in German pile of books includes Peter F. Hamilton series (about 5K pages) that I very much enjoyed in English. I can recommend him as a more current sci-fi author. Particularly The Void Trilogy.
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