zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:51 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:Best of luck!
Thank you, Beli.

Spanish
We had a language meet-up here in the mountains on Saturday and the language was Spanish. Now, I'm fluent, so it was just basic practice for me. But my life partner is a very rusty intermediate speaker and it was a good kick-start for her. She came out of that motivated and is now doing Memrise and looking forward to the next session. We also agreed with the organizer that we would be interested in doing German or French sessions in the near future. Looks like we are starting a local languages group!

Yiddish
This weekend I attended a funeral for the husband of a distant cousin. He was a very kind person and had an incredibly rich history (he holds a land speed record he set in the 60s, worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, etc...) but the reason I'm adding him here is that he had an interesting language background I barely interacted with. Apparently, when he and his wife met, their first date ended singing Yiddish songs.

So yesterday, part of the ceremony was in Yiddish, part in Hebrew and 95% was, of course, in English. I learned that he regularly read a Yiddish newspaper, but I'm not sure which. If I remember correctly, we spoke in Yiddish once, but my command was so incomplete, so novice that with my embarrassment I remember it being a very short conversation. And there it is, the weight of embarrassment and the regrets of language loss.

So maybe Yiddish isn't off the table, I'll think about it and see if I want to get back to it in 6 months.

Shimaore
No active work of the guidebook. My daughter just landed in Mayotte. One of the first things was to send me a link to the one resource that seems to be online. I didn't tell her I already had it. ;) I'm glad about her excitement, more about the move than the language opportunity.

Persian
Received another grammar book and was already a bit put off by the first sentence. The (un) necessary use of an advanced academic language in grammar books makes the reading a slough. I'm glad I have it but I'm sure it could be better written. More on that as I dive into the chapters.

It's Wheeler M. Thackston's "Introduction to Persian" and the nice surprise is that it has audio available here:
https://mll.sfsu.edu/introduction-persian

--- status ---
TYB: Lesson 5
Assimil: Lesson 16-17

Still the focus, still the direction I want to have. Looking forward to completing the TYB and Assimil books. I'm visualizing myself with a thousand Anki cards under my belt, hesitant but comfortable deciphering the script and ready to move on. Hmm, maybe I need to work on what I see as an achievement in 3 months?

I did have an extremely short conversation with a waiter on Friday - I was able to say that I liked my dessert very much. Thank you Assimil.
16 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3505
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:00 pm

Interesting about Yiddish. My maternal grandparents spoke Yiddish (and German) as a native language, though they were so shell-shocked by the war they abandoned both languages for a while whilst living in Belgium after 1947. Only later did Yiddish creep back in after they made friends with a group of other scattered people in England. I don't know Yiddish, just a few words, but I wish I could have learned it and maybe could've gained access to part of their lives lost in time.
3 x

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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:06 pm

Le Baron wrote:Interesting about Yiddish. My maternal grandparents spoke Yiddish (and German) as a native language, though they were so shell-shocked by the war they abandoned both languages for a while whilst living in Belgium after 1947. Only later did Yiddish creep back in after they made friends with a group of other scattered people in England. I don't know Yiddish, just a few words, but I wish I could have learned it and maybe could've gained access to part of their lives lost in time.


It's a big part of my father's family history - my father's generation speaks it - they argue in Yiddish! And my aunt wrote a method that is still in use in Mexico. Here, in Northern California, there is still enough of a Yiddish-speaking community that I could certainly practice it if I spoke it well.

And yes, it's about "gained access to part of their lives lost in time" for me.
5 x
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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:26 pm

"Wasted" a few hours this morning looking at AwesomeTTS, Azure, Integromat, and Google Cloud Text to Speech, Forvo.
I set up test accounts on these and have created API authorizations (Azure, G-Cloud), etc just to get Persian TTS...

No love.

I discovered that while G-Cloud S2T (speech to text) does have Persian and a bunch of other languages, they are not available for TTS. My very own confusion between these two services (speech to text vs text to speech) led me down the wrong path of trying to use TTS to generate mp3 files directly with G-Cloud using Integromat. But the reality is that Persian is not available on Google STT, just on Azure.

Nope, no love there either.

https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/languages
https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/voices

I also polluted my decks with some beginner decks that had images, used Google Translate on a spreadsheet to generate a new deck.
But now I need to clean up my Anki database ...

A little love.

Well, at least I did my Anki cards. Oh, no, I forgot, since I was fiddling about with all the above.

No love.




So after all that futzing around this morning. And then doing some actual work, I've come back to this and thought about what I want to do.

1) Clean out my Anki - I'm going to delete the partially created deck I made using 'French 625' words and google translate. Delete source the French deck too (it's from the shared decks).

2) Forget about Azure and Google Cloud - I need to look into these professionally for an AI project I have but I am truly wasting my time on the TTS tool - it isn't really that ready for what I want, and I just don't want to spend the time futzing with it.

3) Use the existing Farsi Persian Goethe Verlag deck - it's got 1800 cards with audio and should be enough for quite a while. Any new cards that I feel are a little advanced will be set to suspend for the next months. I really like the sound recordings, I think the card design needs a little editing but with 1800 cards - that's basically a year of cards.

4) Focus on my own deck from Teach Yourself and ASSIMIL - I'm not adding the sound or doing the sound editing - at least not for now. Don't hold me to this, I think my USB stick came with the sentences chopped up... right now I've used this as my primary focus and have maybe a week of new cards available. I'd like to keep the number of unseen new cards there at about 100 otherwise there is too much time between the moment I did the lesson and the time I see the card for the first time.

So THE plan ... my cards first, keep those clean and updated and done with 15-20 minutes of review a day, supplement with Goethe Verlag (0-5 new per day). Work on Mace's book and Assimil. STOP GATHERING MATERIAL. I'll hit Pimsleur, grammar, and other things once Mace is done. FOCUS.

Mace: Lesson 6 - 21 more to go.




Oh! I also found some great sci-fi graphic novels in Persian...
https://peydayesh.shop/book/3feedissue02/
10 x
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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:58 pm

Persian

Actually doing the exercises in the TY book; this has led me to really try to understand conjugations. So I found two interesting resources.

Cool Conjugator here for Persian 'to come':
https://cooljugator.com/fa/آمدن

and Persian Verb Conjugator
https://www.jahanshiri.ir/pvc/en/

This has helped me figure out, for example:

I come -> miâyam میایم

red is the present stem root
green is added for stem roots ending in vowels
blue is the pronoun suffix.

Cool.

And this was news to me...
Like Latin, Persian is an SOV language. “Subject” comes first, then “Object” and finally “Verb”. This is the preferred and basic word order. However, since Persian always marks direct and indirect objects and clearly indicates grammatical cases, it has free word order. Words can appear in any order in a sentence depending on the emphasis or literary preferences.


I had read both that Persian was SOV and also a free word order. It wasn't clear to me how to square these two opposing ideas. But the above note clarifies this sufficiently for me for now.
9 x
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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:43 pm

Persian
I need glasses to learn Persian, I found a pair of +2 magnifying glasses I had bought a few years ago for electronics work and these do the job!

TYB - Mace: Lesson 9 - 20 more to go.
Focusing mostly on Mace so ASSIMIL is at a stand-still these last few days. But definitely doing the work.

The exercises are getting more serious and I think I need to spend some time doing a few things:

- review the grammatical tense markers
- practice the script - I’m still very slow writing it with a lot of hesitation. Maybe watch a video and do a few pages of writing just letters. Blergh.
- verbs drills - to come, to give, to have, to see FSI style. Just so I can practice these when I am away from the book - I saw horse, she saw a cat, you saw a book, we saw a glass, etc… (simple past and simple present)

I started looking at modern lit that I might want to use later on, seems a bit like procrastinating - what I call 'book-shelving'.

Objectives - so If I want to learn 1500 words by the end of the year, that’s 3000 Anki cards or 250 additional active cards per month. Around 8 per day. Right now it is doable. I’ll be at about 280 active cards this month.

That’s also close to 30K reviews. Whelp. That’s about twice what I completed for German. Is that realistic? I wasn’t that consistent with German.

Let’s complete next month and reevaluate.

New keyboard cover!
8A1EC7AA-5310-47E1-96B2-C88ADADC1FD0.jpeg


And some of my books came in. Plus I discovered that one on the local libraries has available material. I’ll note my thoughts/review on this material in this next week.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
14 x
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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:48 pm

Persian

As I mentioned I needed to work on pronunciation (and letter names, and speeding up my character recognition). I found one of the Anki shared decks, modified it a little and then just did the entire deck in a quick 5 minute run to move the letters I know out to 10 days and the rest to learning over the next day. About 50/50 in the first run-through. Every letter that comes up that I don’t know will get written out for an entire line. Simple brute drill. Hopefully, after that I can say I’m comfortable with the alphabet pronunciation.
20 days in, and I was still working on that. But total actual learning time just a few hours.

I’ve been doing a few corrections on my deck, errors that crept in, layout and I think I have a workable deck. Not as many images as a 'fluent forever’ deck, still too much translation but that will disappear over time. And the deck L1 is still a mix of French and English (Assimil and TYB) and different transliterations… ok, my deck is a mess. :) But I know what I need to edit and will do so as the cards come up and I notice the odd transliteration or issue. I’m going with an English (TYB) transliteration for now (sh instead of ch, etc.) and Persian IPA. And just romanised vowels (because IPA flubbed vowels).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Persian

for example for ش the sound is easier for me to understand ʃ or 'sh’ and not 'ch’. But for vowels, I’m just going to use the romanised transliterations found here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_phonology

Screenshot 2022-01-26 at 06.46.54.png


Status
- Finished TYB First Section (Lesson 11) onwards to grammar!
- Assimil 17
- Anki 290 active cards, which is a tiny vocabulary of 145 words. This raises questions on where I’ll be in three months. More on that point later when I do my 30 day review.

Concerns
I also need to balance my language learning. It’s a crutch when I get down, I can spend hours doing that when I need to focus on other stuff.
I’m running two startups, a third organization, had a recent move, family heath issues with my father and need to take care of my kids from a distance. It’s a lot and the weight may be leading to burn-out. If I’m using languages as an escape it is fine, but if all I'm doing is that, surfing and avoiding the rest. Well, that’s not healthy. Balance is needed.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
12 x
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
x 7030
Contact:

30 days - Persian

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jan 28, 2022 1:14 am

Persian

30 days of learning, where am I?
Well, I'm having fun!

- I’ve learned the abjad, more or less but have not yet mastered it.
- I have a sense of some basic sentences and grammar.
- I have 318 cards in review, mostly the early vocabulary from the Teach Yourself Book and some ASSIMIL.
- I have a grasp of the pronouns and passive endings, no fluid mastery
- I have a grasp of 6-12 verbs, infinitives, past stem, and the past stem, no fluid mastery
- I’ve completed the first section of TYB and 17 lessons of ASSIMIL.
- I’ve acquired or have access from the local library for enough material to study well beyond the next 2 months.
- Over the last two days found a bit of better balance between work, life and language learning.
- I feel a 7 out 10 on what I’m doing with this.

Goals for next 30 days
- Create and front load the Forever Fluent 625 Word List (that’s 1250 cards or 4 times what I’ve done so far) EDIT: That seems unreasonable after some reflection, I think I'll try to actively review half of that list in the next 30 days.
- TYB: Continue with TYB Grammar section to lesson 24. Maybe finish TYB? Continue growing my TYB deck to 600+ active cards.
- Master my abjad deck so that all cards are mature and without hesitation.
- Keep a study/work/life balance.
CB41964D-5D15-499F-8E5A-2180BDCB3A4A.jpeg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
10 x
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
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 31, 2022 10:11 pm

Persian

The quality of study has been low these last two days. Not necessarily just 'going through the motions but really not well-focused.
Hope to correct that today. I’m now starting to add cards with fewer transcripts. I’ve paused studying the 625 wordlist because I had the impression that I’m saturated with reviews already from TYB. And as a complement, I’ve started reading Routledge 'Basic Persian’ - from Routledge Grammar Workbooks (I’m going to call that RGW in this log).

My longest sentence is
اتوبوس دیر آمد و باین سبب من بدفتر دیر آمدم


I couldn’t read that a month ago. Well, now I just struggle for a couple of minutes :lol:

- January 31/31
- TYB 13
- Assimil 18
- RGW pg 15

Using a lot of Anki, Google Translate, Forvo, pen, and paper. Re-edited my Anki card format today to not show transliterations if the sound is present.

This video from Luca Lampariello came across my video feed. It's pretty good. Putting it here as a reminder for me.

9 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2113
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
x 4823

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:35 pm

Thanks for the reference to Luca. It is indeed a good reminder.
1 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests