zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

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Beli Tsar
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Beli Tsar » Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:51 pm

zenmonkey wrote:Persian
One of the challenges I’m addressing is vocabulary learning. But I may be over-focusing here and not really balancing my learning. The issue I see is that while I now can somewhat read words, I certainly have no mastery. So using tools like wordlists, the Persian word just doesn’t visually scan and represent a group of phonemes as easily as romanized alphabet words do. I recognize that this is slowing me down in vocabulary acquisition - there is no way in hell that I can do 50 words a day, never mind doing a focused 100.

My typing in Persian still sucks and is very slow. So for now, I'm only adding 10-20 words a day. This means I'm about 2 weeks behind on the worlds I'm seeing in my lessons.

I definitely found the same early on with Persian vocab. It's really hard to use lists to memorise, and with SRS you need audio (Memrise or Anki) at the beginning to make vocab work at all. No idea how much it costs, but the Microsoft Azure Persian TTS engine now seems quite good, and works with AwesomeTTS on Anki. There are frequency lists out there that you can use to avoid typing if its slowing you down; I did that, and then ended up downloading sounds one by one from forvo. It was ridiculously time consuming, and if I did things over I'd seriously consider spending money on Forvo/Azure or something...

Of course, some of the Memrise courses do have audio already.
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby cito » Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:49 pm

Beli Tsar wrote: I definitely found the same early on with Persian vocab. It's really hard to use lists to memorise, and with SRS you need audio (Memrise or Anki) at the beginning to make vocab work at all.


I've been studying some Persian lately (literally could not resist, its too amazing and beautiful haha) and I came across https://persianlanguageonline.com/ and I honestly feel kind of amazed that a resource like this would be available publicly and completely free of charge. It is made by a British non-profit dedicated to promoting Persian culture and has more than 60 lessons from beginner-elementary-intermediate (20 each) and for each lesson a glossary of 15-40 (maybe even more) words WITH downloadable audio, translation, transcription, and transliteration- all corresponding to the dialogues for each lesson. They also make sure to include both spoken and formal forms for a lot of the words / phrases. I already started making Anki cards with them :D . It took me only a few minutes because I could easily copy and paste all the writing, and I organized all the audio into files on my computer for easy access.

The audio is clear, everything is free, no typing required (as the Persian is included), formal/spoken forms, clear explanation (as far as I can tell), and you can take as much time as you need for each lesson (also quizzes at the end of each lesson for review).

Zenmonkey, I know you have already started making cards and have quite a lot so far, but maybe you could look at this? I think it's really promising. I honestly feel kinda dumb for buying the Assimil book because of how good this resource looks, but I figure it wont hurt to do both lol. Assimil will have to wait for a little though. I like to start those after I have a basis in the language.
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Feb 14, 2022 6:18 pm

Lycopersicon wrote:Perhaps a Persian typing course could be helpful?
https://typeo.top/


You're right of course. And thanks for the link, that removes the effort of searching.
I thought about using a typing course, but was frustrated because it's an additional diversion to just 'doing the language'.

But I definitely should do it, thanks!
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Feb 14, 2022 6:29 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:Persian
One of the challenges I’m addressing is vocabulary learning. But I may be over-focusing here and not really balancing my learning. The issue I see is that while I now can somewhat read words, I certainly have no mastery. So using tools like wordlists, the Persian word just doesn’t visually scan and represent a group of phonemes as easily as romanized alphabet words do. I recognize that this is slowing me down in vocabulary acquisition - there is no way in hell that I can do 50 words a day, never mind doing a focused 100.

My typing in Persian still sucks and is very slow. So for now, I'm only adding 10-20 words a day. This means I'm about 2 weeks behind on the worlds I'm seeing in my lessons.

I definitely found the same early on with Persian vocab. It's really hard to use lists to memorise, and with SRS you need audio (Memrise or Anki) at the beginning to make vocab work at all. No idea how much it costs, but the Microsoft Azure Persian TTS engine now seems quite good, and works with AwesomeTTS on Anki. There are frequency lists out there that you can use to avoid typing if its slowing you down; I did that, and then ended up downloading sounds one by one from forvo. It was ridiculously time consuming, and if I did things over I'd seriously consider spending money on Forvo/Azure or something...

Of course, some of the Memrise courses do have audio already.


The Microsoft Azure TTS engine has a free tier and I've set that up. I was unable to get it to fully work with AwesomeTTS (it defaulted to Arabic pronunciation) but one of the developers has recently published a new version (HpyerTTS) which does the job (during the card creation, or in batch mode, but not dynamically). It's very good. Before I was doing the Forvo search and download method, which is very slow.

Card creation now is not taking that long - downloading from Forvo with "search, find, page loading, select, download, rename, insert" was certainly an excruciatingly slow process, whereas now it's "click, created".

I'll look into the Memrise courses too, thanks!
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Feb 14, 2022 6:34 pm

cito wrote:I've been studying some Persian lately (literally could not resist, its too amazing and beautiful haha) and I came across https://persianlanguageonline.com/ and I honestly feel kind of amazed that a resource like this would be available publicly and completely free of charge. It is made by a British non-profit dedicated to promoting Persian culture and has more than 60 lessons from beginner-elementary-intermediate (20 each) and for each lesson a glossary of 15-40 (maybe even more) words WITH downloadable audio, translation, transcription, and transliteration- all corresponding to the dialogues for each lesson. They also make sure to include both spoken and formal forms for a lot of the words / phrases. I already started making Anki cards with them :D . It took me only a few minutes because I could easily copy and paste all the writing, and I organized all the audio into files on my computer for easy access.

The audio is clear, everything is free, no typing required (as the Persian is included), formal/spoken forms, clear explanation (as far as I can tell), and you can take as much time as you need for each lesson (also quizzes at the end of each lesson for review).

Zenmonkey, I know you have already started making cards and have quite a lot so far, but maybe you could look at this? I think it's really promising. I honestly feel kinda dumb for buying the Assimil book because of how good this resource looks, but I figure it wont hurt to do both lol. Assimil will have to wait for a little though. I like to start those after I have a basis in the language.


! خیلی عالی

Oh, shiny!! That's a great resource. Right now, I'm doing Teach Yourself and Assimil. I'll probably use that once I'm a little further ahead with my current tools. Looks really great! Thanks!
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Feb 23, 2022 1:04 am

Persian

I'm enjoying the Chai podcasts and sometimes know the answers to vocabulary from my other resources.
I recently stumbled across the two forms of 'to be' and asked in a Facebook forum about them and got lots of nonsensical answers. Eventually got a couple of good answers. I was definitely confused because my prior knowledge was basically mapping them to the Spanish 'ser/estar'. This is somewhat wrong.

One of the better explanations that I got:

Hast (هست) is a verb, and is derived from hastan (هستن), which means to exist.
Ast (است) is only a sort of connector, not a verb in its own right.
For example, if you say Khuda hast (خدا هست), it means God exists. But if you say Khuda ast (خدا است), the phrase is incomplete, and literally means God is. To complete the sentence, you could say Khuda Mehrban ast (God is Merciful).
In other words, hast (هست) shows the mere existence or presence of phenomena/objects, and ast (است) shows their quality.
For example, sheer hast (شیر هست) means milk is available/there is milk. But if you were to describe the available milk, you'd use ast (است). Like sheer sard ast (شیر سرد است), meaning the milk is cold.
P.S. If you're learning Persian, don't be discouraged by this. You'd be surprised to know how often native speakers get this wrong.


But then add on the layer for colloquial use (from the podcast)

hasteen means ‘you are’ in Persian. There is another way to conjugate ‘to be’ in the second person formal form, however, and that is hasteed. When the word is written, it takes that form. However, in colloquial conversation, you are more likely to see the word conjugated as hasteen. This is the general rule for the formal second person conjugation of words in Persian- in written form, they appear as -eed, and in spoken colloquial form they appear as -een.


And then it gets further simplified in speech - I'm still figuring that out.

I've tried to work on typing speed using a simple tool.
Have not yet settled between typingtudy.com, tenfast or keybr.com But I need to speed up my normal typing too! :lol:

The current speed with Persian is .... 7 words per minute. No bueno.

Status
Podcast 7
TYB 14
Assimil 27
Anki 586 reviews/ 842 cards with too many new cards I need to start.
Fun factor 8/10

I'm dreaming word repetitions when I do my cards late at night. Not the most restful nights.
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Feb 23, 2022 6:17 am

And after writing that post, I was invited into town by my uncle to have dinner and pick up a pair of mice (long story), that my cousin's kids can't keep. So they chose a Persian restaurant that my cousin likes and it was excellent. I was put on the spot, of course, to say something in Persian so I was able to say the most basic sentences. But we spent most of the evening speaking Spanish. And different nephew, he's 14, told me of his plans to learn modern Greek as a gateway to other languages.

He's already bilingual in Spanish/English. He's interested in Chinese and I wasn't going to dissuade "the Greek path to Chinese" idea but he'll discover that on his own. I got bamboozled into playing chess with him and his cousin and apparently they play quite a bit - I defended the honor of my generation. :lol: A win and a draw. I haven't played in a few years! But I made them give me the names of the pieces in 5 languages. Helping them make the connection between my uncle's nickname and the Hebrew word for King - מלך.

So that's part of the vocabulary to learn in Persian too!

And I also received a book I had ordered on Colloquial Persian.

So, happy camper, I drove over the mountain back home with mice (I already learned موش), a full stomach, Elwell-Sutton 1941 Colloquial Persian (Trubner's Manuals - all text is transliterated) and I was able to listen to two episodes of Chai & Persian. What more do I need?! :lol:

Anyone want a pair of موش ?
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Feb 25, 2022 7:18 pm

No bright thoughts or a reporting on language learning today.

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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Feb 25, 2022 10:15 pm

zenmonkey wrote:No bright thoughts or a reporting on language learning today.

I started reading Dostoyevsky's White Nights earlier today, so your post is well timed! :-)
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky. That is a youthful question too, dear reader, very youthful, but may the Lord put it more frequently into your heart!

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36034
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Feb 28, 2022 4:51 pm

The mice are now gone. Given away to a barely articulate local teen with a hoodie. Where mice go.

Persian

60 days!
And everything is getting a little harder, the Teach Yourself lessons take me several hours and I am unable to do the exercises without reading back or using other resources (or "cheating " :lol:). I find that this is ok, despite the slowing down, I’m still learning.

So how am I doing with the last month of goals?

Last months goals
Goal: 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.
FAIL - Started working on these but felt they didn't yet fit my needs and they are all grouped by themes, so I put them off.

Goal: TYB: Continue with TYB Grammar section to lesson 24. Maybe finish TYB? Continue growing my TYB deck to 600+ active cards.
FAIL - I'm at TYB 14a slowly plugging along, added other material in the meantime, but did not focus on this.
SUCCESS - I did get my Anki deck to 611 active cards, so I'm at goal.

Goal: Master my abjad deck so that all cards are mature and without hesitation.
SUCCESS - Abjad deck is learned. 90% mature.

Goal:Keep a study/work/life balance.
Meh, can do better.

Status
podcast 14
TYB 14a
Assimil 27
Anki 611 reviews / 878 cards - too many new cards
Fun factor: 8/10

Will think about new goals.



Edit: New Goals for the next 30 days.

1) Continue with Anki and get to 900 active reviews.
2) TYB / ASSIMIL / CHAI Podcast - complete at least 4 TYB lessons, 12 ASSIMIL lessons and 12 Podcasts
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