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 May 02, 2022 8:27 am

Beli Tsar wrote:That's a vague and wandering way of saying that I think you can get by with سما most of the time. Some of the other textbooks you mentioned definitely deal with the تو forms, though.

p.s. this is very much my two cents taken from a limited range of situations, all outside Iran, with pretty weird power dynamics at play (always being the 'benefactor') and I may be misunderstanding/missing lots of details/not good enough at Farsi/stereotyping horribly... perhaps some of our better Farsi users can weigh in?


That's for sharing your experience, appreciated it!

I think we "foreigners" get away with informal/formal misuse quite often - I see it in other places. My language teacher (native) for colloquial Persian was pushing in the other direction - saying that I don't want to sound too bookish. But I'd likely be in agreement more with you from fear of overstepping. Plus my experience with French and ME speakers (where 'tu' is often used by younger speakers but 'vous' is expected as a response...).
2 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

Beli Tsar
Green Belt
Posts: 384
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:59 pm
Languages: English (N), Ancient Greek (intermediate reading), Latin (Beginner) Farsi (Beginner), Biblical Hebrew (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9548
x 1294

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Beli Tsar » Mon May 02, 2022 8:43 am

zenmonkey wrote:I think we "foreigners" get away with informal/formal misuse quite often - I see it in other places. My language teacher (native) for colloquial Persian was pushing in the other direction - saying that I don't want to sound too bookish. But I'd likely be in agreement more with you from fear of overstepping. Plus my experience with French and ME speakers (where 'tu' is often used by younger speakers but 'vous' is expected as a response...).

Interesting to hear that coming from your teacher; sounding bookish is definitely a big risk with Persian - perhaps almost unavoidable, if you are mainly learning with textbooks - so I can see how they'd suggest that.

This reminds me of the sheer challenge of politeness/formality/diglossia in Persian. And also the way in which different natives would tell me very strongly that it was imperative to do x or y for politeness, only to be directly contradicted by the next person I asked...
1 x
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin Reading
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin 'Films'

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 May 04, 2022 10:42 am

Persian diglossia does add an additional challenge. Frankly, I'm slightly annoyed by it. But then, I've evolved from "I'll just lean standard Persian." to "Really, no one speaks like that?!" to "Fine, let's find some colloquial material!" :lol: But I'm still not fully embracing spoken, colloquial Persian. Maybe it will click in later.

Persian
As Assimil speeds up I'm discovering that I can't shadow entire lessons well. I end up catching part of the phrase and then mumble along and get lost. And then lose the meaning. I may need to spend more time per lesson. This is an asymptotic curve that will lead to stuck if I don't watch out. But since I've started the active wave I hope it will help out with the later lessons. I'm thinking that perhaps I should also do a "two-wave" listening to the Chai podcast. But then I fear I'll be eternally going over the same material.

But it's good, it's the voyage, not the destination. And I am looking forward to other material - FSI (I got a copy of the pre-FSI spoken language book!!) and Pimsleur are there waiting!

Since my last update, I did exactly zero italki sessions - as useful as I find them I also find them tiring right now and I was time-crunched these last days. Time to reschedule some lessons!

Minor tech issues:
I'm annoyed at my Mac myself as I have set the hotkeys so that tapping on caps-locks switches between Persian and English. I'm not sure I like this or not now given the number of times I incorrectly use that key.

I've noticed a minor bug in Anki - setting the CSS/HTML formatting from right to left does not reset between cards and 'bleeds over' to other cards or parts of the program. I need to fix that.

German
Gasp. Well, I'm doing what I said I wouldn't do and adding back in another language. But this is only for maintenance. As I joined the Super Challenge (half). I'll be reporting on my reading and film viewing.

As a series, I've started watching Tribes of Europa - but evidently, I wasn't that impressed but I had to actually go and look up what I was watching... whoops. Hope it picks up. Otherwise back to Berlin Babylon!!

Other
I'm still watching and listening to a lot of Korean because my daughter is into it, but I don't understand a word and this is a language that is very far away from my interest. I'm fascinated that my daughter is into the culture but frankly I can't say I understand it. Generation or interest gap. I do hope she picks up a little bit. Her baccalaureate exam yesterday went well, and now she can focus on German again. I just saw a book on "L'Ectriture Cuneiforme" on a daughter's bookshelf. That may get 'borrowed'.

: 40 / 86 Persian: Assimil (40)
: 9 / 86 Persian: Assimil 2nd Wave (9)
: 16 / 27 Persian: Teach Yourself (16a)
: 36 / 110 Persian: Chai and Conversation (36)
: 906 / 1500 Persian: Anki (906)
: 1 / 50 SC: German Books (1)
: 1 / 50 SC: German Films (1)
7 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

Beli Tsar
Green Belt
Posts: 384
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:59 pm
Languages: English (N), Ancient Greek (intermediate reading), Latin (Beginner) Farsi (Beginner), Biblical Hebrew (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9548
x 1294

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Beli Tsar » Wed May 04, 2022 11:44 am

zenmonkey wrote:I've noticed a minor bug in Anki - setting the CSS/HTML formatting from right to left does not reset between cards and 'bleeds over' to other cards or parts of the program. I need to fix that.

Are you using the right-to-left option for card fields?

When you edit cards, and then press the 'fields' button, and then the 'Reverse text direction' button at the bottom of the window?

It works perfectly for me (and much better than trying to mess with the HTML myself).
1 x
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin Reading
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin 'Films'

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 May 04, 2022 1:53 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:I've noticed a minor bug in Anki - setting the CSS/HTML formatting from right to left does not reset between cards and 'bleeds over' to other cards or parts of the program. I need to fix that.

Are you using the right-to-left option for card fields?

When you edit cards, and then press the 'fields' button, and then the 'Reverse text direction' button at the bottom of the window?

It works perfectly for me (and much better than trying to mess with the HTML myself).


I'm using the RTL option on regular cards. But I also have some cloze cards that require futzing around with HTML (because I am mixing languages). You are smarter than me if you are avoiding that.
0 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

Beli Tsar
Green Belt
Posts: 384
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:59 pm
Languages: English (N), Ancient Greek (intermediate reading), Latin (Beginner) Farsi (Beginner), Biblical Hebrew (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9548
x 1294

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Beli Tsar » Wed May 04, 2022 3:40 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
Beli Tsar wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:I've noticed a minor bug in Anki - setting the CSS/HTML formatting from right to left does not reset between cards and 'bleeds over' to other cards or parts of the program. I need to fix that.

Are you using the right-to-left option for card fields?

When you edit cards, and then press the 'fields' button, and then the 'Reverse text direction' button at the bottom of the window?

It works perfectly for me (and much better than trying to mess with the HTML myself).


I'm using the RTL option on regular cards. But I also have some cloze cards that require futzing around with HTML (because I am mixing languages). You are smarter than me if you are avoiding that.

Alas, no. Should have guessed you'd be ahead of me.

You are reminding me once again of the grief and pain that RTL text can cause...
1 x
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin Reading
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin 'Films'

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 May 04, 2022 3:58 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:You are reminding me once again of the grief and pain that RTL text can cause...


Couple of years back I wrote an app for immigrants learning German - when I tested it in a RTL setup ... yikes, took me 3 days to debug something that should have been 15 minutes.

It shouldn't be such a pain. Yet there it is.
1 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 » Tue May 10, 2022 10:17 am

So I spent a lot of time playing around to create a sentence list based on a frequency dictionary for Persian this week, importing it into Anki and adding sound via the Azure TTS. It's sloppy and a lot of high-frequency words were skipped because they didn't have a corresponding sentence in the Tatoeba database. That's fine for me - I now have more cards than I will likely ever get to and I'm still adding from my resources as I study along. What I did see was that a lot of the words in the dictionary don't correspond to word-for-word translation in the example sentences, so when I run into those I'll have to pause and consider usage a little bit more.

Reminder to myself - that frequency note set is more of a learning tool than a review tool.

I also got to visit the local language book store - Nouvelle Librairie Internationale VO - after being quite disappointed when I visited its old location and discovered that it had closed. NO! It had just moved a few blocks away. Still not quite as nice as before as the size of the store is a little smaller and the collection is more limited. Persian was really just two books and I picked up a really bad children's story. Shimaore was non-existent and even the Portuguese collection was on a small shelf. I am seeing all these bookstores shrink and disappear.

The big Lille bookstore's language selection has been slowly shrinking over the years and only really focuses on maybe 5-6 languages and has incidentally another half dozen. There is a great travel bookstore here and I did find a guide, another novel related to Mayotte and travel in Persia (all in French) - I'm looking forward to reading Les Adventures de Hadji Baba d'Isphahan! I also picked up a small guide on Ch'ti as a gift to my nephew who lives here.

Work is piling up and my study work balance is not going to be very good these next weeks.

Persian
As Assimil continues to pick up and I'm still trying to shadow a bit but I'm mostly now just repeating chunks after the fact. pause-play, pause play, repeat. Chunks and short sentences are going into Anki with a target headword. And I've updated the TTS settings so that I have {word} {pause} {sentnence}. The pause is created with - [. " " .] - apparently the AI reads periods as pauses, so I'm using that to artificially make the sound files I want.

The second wave continues without issue.

The Teach Yourself Book exercises are still too hard, so those are advancing slowly. As I focus more on Assimil.

Chai and Conversation - the conversation recording quality is mediocre but it is good to hear the different voices, so I am sticking to it but still thinking I'll do a second wave of the units 1-3 at some point.

German
I've continued watching Tribes of Europa

Other
Portuguese! Watched a few videos with pretty much full understanding, and I'm avoiding the temptation to study it actively. But definitely the next language to target - I'm excited at the thought of needing a very different method of learning for something where I already have a high degree of understanding but significant issues with productive interference.

: 40 / 86 Persian: Assimil (41)
: 11 / 86 Persian: Assimil 2nd Wave (11)
: 17 / 27 Persian: Teach Yourself (17)
: 37 / 110 Persian: Chai and Conversation (37)
: 1101 / 2000 Persian: Anki (11001)
: 1 / 50 SC: German Books (1)
: 2 / 50 SC: German Films (2)
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 May 15, 2022 8:08 pm

I spent the weekend in Paris visiting my oldest.
Discovered that there is a Persian bookstore!! So we visited that today.

I may need to leave some clothes behind when I leave.

More later. Train is arriving in Lille.

F107F6A1-4C97-4635-8F38-07F4498C2640.jpeg
080388A9-EDDA-4E4A-856F-963F5F3E8624.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 May 16, 2022 2:33 pm

I think a key question moving forward for me is just "how much Persian did you hear today?"

Persian
Vocab

I’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?

Listening
Basically, I’m focusing on Assimil and Chai and Conversation.
Definitely need to step this up at some point. I need to think about this.

Other
This 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: :) :) :) :lol:

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.

: 43 / 86 Persian: Assimil 43
: 13 / 86 Persian: Assimil 2nd Wave 13
: 17 / 27 Persian: Teach Yourself 17
: 37 / 110 Persian: Chai and Conversation 37
: 1162 / 2000 Persian: Anki
: 1 / 50 SC: German Books
: 1 / 50 SC: German Films
10 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests