zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

[zenmonkey]

به چه می‌اندیشی، چه کسی باور کرد،
جنگل جان مرا آتش عشق تو خاکستر کرد

Zhenya Perepelitsa, a Ukrainian soldier with the civilian territorial defense forces, wearing military fatigue and standing in an open field covered in snow, looked into the camera and recited a verse of Persian poetry in Farsi: “What are you thinking? Who would believe, your love burned to ashes the jungle of my soul.”

- poem by Hamid Mossadegh

[zenmonkey]

Sooo.
When I was living in Germany there were a few songs we listen to a lot and Cobrastyle by the Teddybears was one of them. I thought it was in German, that my German was not good enough and that I only got one or two words along the way...



Yikes - the group is a Swedish group and the singer is Jamaican.

And the lyrics go a bit like this...

Mi press trigger mi nuh press people button
Nuh bodda chat, come face mi wid somethin'
Like how mi have twenty two inna mi somethin'
Ten are for you, so forget di next dozen (fool)
Press trigger mi nuh press people button
Nuh bodda chat, come face mi wid somethin'
Like how mi have twenty two inna mi somethin'
Ten are for you, so forget di next dozen (fool)
Anytime you're ready punahussy start war
See who now fi spread it out more pon di tar
My style is di bom digi bom di deng di deng digi-digi (Ooh)
Da rude bwoy no pley wid di bom di deng di deng digi-digi (Ooh)
My style is di bom digi bom di deng di deng digi-digi (Ooh)
Da rude bwoy no pley wid di bom di deng di deng digi-digi (Ooh)

For me the first line ended with verboten and the second with sorgen.

Oh, well. The reason I'm writing about this here is that L., my daughter sent it to me. She just re-found the song.
These last few days e have been talking about certifications and tests.

She wants to get her B2 certificate in German and then a B2 in Spanish and we've been discussing the logistics of the tests, since she is a student in Lyon but won't be there when the exam comes up. Prepping for these tests, which version to take, etc.. and then getting her a tutor on iTalki have taken our last three calls - she's very motivated because she want to study in Mexico next year and would need at least the B2 certificate.

That's it. More on my studies later in the week.

[zenmonkey]

I fell down the Internet. Or how my Persian suffered.

A few days ago I decided to [look into reviving] revive my language learning tracking app.
Well, I haven't done any programming since 2018 and I needed to see if I could update my code, re-compile it, and get it to run. In the last few years, a lot has happened in the app development world and basically, I am way behind.

But lo and behold - about 15 minutes of work and editing and my app was up and running. Still not something I would publicly share - it's more of an early prototype.

And so, with the thought of prototyping ... I decided to spend a little design time (on Figma) drawing out what I'd like to see... I use Figma a lot so I thought I could just pop in there and throw something together. But I principally use it for business web design and I didn't have a great set of templates for mobile. So I hunted around a bit, found a library that is ... just ok, and discovered a lot more about Figma, so I went and played with that for a while.

Still not programming and not studying Persian.

Several Many hours in I've got an ugly prototype that sort of does better some of the things I want to be done.

In the meantime, I've discovered that Apple has delivered a new way of developing, and while the language I know for app development still works - this new way, well, I just have to explore it.

A dozen videos in, a few test runs and this is cool! I like how this is working.

[I'm also working and volunteering and ...] and ... my dog peed in the kitchen one afternoon. Constantly walking the dog is good for Persian because I then listen to my podcast. But dog pee is not because then I'm walking the dog 5-8 times a day to not have more incidents. It's annoying.

So, to get my dog out on time without more accidents I'm trying to track the time we are inside without going out. But these alarms are annoying. So what do I do?

I start writing a dog walk tracking app. With this new method. Not particularly useful for Persian. But writing something like this certainly amused me.

Code: Select all

 Section(header: Text("Doogy Do")) {
                    Toggle("Pooped", isOn: $data.pooped)
                        .onChange(of: data.pooped) { _isOn in
                     }
             }


All this to say, I've been really doing mostly the minimum 30 minutes a day. A little more on the weekend.

[zenmonkey]

It's Sunday night and I want to capture a quick thought before I go back to Persian.

This weekend I caught my father reading La Douce Empoisonneuse by Arto Paasilinna - A great book, his books are a passion I share with him, my ex, my ex MIL, my daughters. For quite a while they were the typical book gift we all gave each other. What is remarkable is that my father is reading again. He's had memory and executive function issues due to some brain surgery (!) a while back and it's nice to see him reading. In French. And all this because we went foreign language book hunting together.

More library trips in our future.

Today we took a day off from work and family and had a lazy breakfast - and spent a large part of the day discovering antique stores (we are looking for bookshelves and lamps), having coffee, puttering about the mountain towns. I dragged my Persian book along and M had a book, but even so, we didn't crack these open at the coffee shop. But we spoke a bit of German and Spanish...

And I've gone ahead and signed up for a test session with a Persian teacher for tomorrow. Primarily, I want to start working more on listening and speaking in a conversational space as a beginner. Surprisingly, I'm anxious. Which I know is stupid. But once again, new language, new moments of anxiety. I think it might be more around "am I doing this too early", "is this a waste of time for now," rather than anxiety about speaking. I've set my own and the teacher's expectations about my level. It's a test session, I'll evaluate afterward if it makes sense to continue now or wait to have lessons a bit later.

[zenmonkey]

Persian
Well, had the first one on one lesson and it was ... a very basic review. I find that acceptable at this point as we did cover some things I did not know and this repetition also helps to ground what I've learned before.


Podcast 21 / review 11
Assimil 30
TYB 15
Anki 729 in review/ 888

German

Started watching Babylon Berlin. Which is brilliant and complicated and ... challenging to follow. I may need to read the summaries. Or see this several times.

[zenmonkey]

Persian

A week away from 3 months and I know I’m likely to miss some of my goals. No matter, still moving along. I’m looking forward to my 1on1 lesson tonight. I’ll do a few more weeks and we can try to align the teaching style to a more "only Persian" method or it will be time to move on.

This week we had dinner with some neighbors - the man that lives there worked in my father’s company and while my father retired a long time ago, he’s still known. So we were invited to meet the neighbor’s family and some friends (that also worked for my father a long time ago). This is relevant for the language log because my neighbor's wife is from Iran. We got to speak a few words (my limit still) and ended up speaking a bit of French and Spanish too.

I still need to become more comfortable with my 'basic' set of directive phrases - greetings, talking to a teacher questions. I’ll be drilling those this week.

Because I have not been keeping up on my target for TYB/Assimil - I have been doing Anki every day. I’ve been able to mostly catch up on new cards. So what I enter now from the podcast or the lessons should be reviewed within the week. This is where I want to be.

And this weekend, we attended another language exchange meetup (now on the 3rd Saturday of the month) where we spoke Spanish (my wife is working on hers). Small group, rainy afternoon but there we were drinking local wine and chatting. I met a few polyglots, so I’m recruited to set up a French and German meeting. Nice to see other language nuts.

I think it will soon be time to start working on the Starnberg beginner cards (There are 1800 cards waiting for me).

And I just received the Colloquial Persian by Rafiee book. It was very, very cheap but unfortunately, it is also heavily annotated and it’s really beat up. But that’s it - no more Persian books for a bit. I’m full of resources for now

Status
Podcast 22 / review 12
Assimil 31
TYB 16
Anki 781 in review / 893 cards

[zenmonkey]

Persian

I just spent a good hour and a half trying to move forward with the Teach Yourself Book lesson exercises. And I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to do them in two phases. Frankly, the learning curve on the exercises from 15 on is intense. I ended up using Google Lens to "cheat" on the reading text because I simply got stuck. That's not very effective.

And part of the problem is the print size - it looks like this "می" to me. That's annoying. So I'm going to focus a little more on the other material, read the lessons but come back to the exercises in a second pass. Maybe that will help.

And my Anki deck now has more than 900 cards, but I'm keeping that study time at about 20-30 min. So Anki is 20-50% of my study time (on a good day) right now. It isn't growing significantly because I only add cards on days when I've kept the session below 20 minutes. But I'm definitely getting to the point were there are enough words in my head that new vocabulary is more of a struggle to recall. Time to really be more strict about working with chunks or sentences.

On the other hand, I've also limited the amount of words and content going into Anki so that I avoid overloading my deck - I only want to keep the time between the moment when I decided "this is a good words or chunks" and the time I begin seeing it as a card to about 10 days max. This means keeping my unseen cards to at most 100 at any time. (Not always easy like today - I started with 70 unseen cards and an hour later I'm at 140 ...)

"Meta" deck: I think I'm going to add another Anki deck - and just use it for a few dozen phrases around language learning - all those basic phrases that I need to be able to say in Persian to express "please help me out with my language learning" - e.g. how do you say, I don't understand, could you repeat, what does this mean, etc... and the basic greatings for opening and closing my live language lessons. I'll move those over from my current deck. And really just overlearn all of those since they are essential to further learning.

The great thing about Assimil is that now the lessons are no longer artificially slow. I really don't like that about the first lessons.

And my 'non-language life' is getting a little busy - just launched a new semester at the accelerator I help run, I have a platform launch coming up and need to plan a trip to Europe again... I'm terribly behind on email. But so far, it seems it hasn't killed my language time.

Status
Podcast 23 / review 12
Assimil 32
TYB 16
Anki 791 in review / 929 cards

[zenmonkey]

Persian

I wanted to share today my study time, and how I was working so that I could think about it and also as a reflection on things like blind shadowing, using Assimil, Anki. But I think today is really a study on interruptions and squirrels.

It's Sunday and I decided to start my study session by catching up on my daily Anki - 75 cards or so, that should be pretty fast. But sure enough, a couple of minutes in the dog interrupted me and wanted a walk. No problem, I grabbed my headphones and phone and we headed out.

I decided to start the next Assimil lesson (32) with just blind-listening since I didn't have the book with me; let the language and the lesson wash over me as I walked in the woods. That started out fine and I wasn't really able to repeat anything except a few half phrases under my breath. I listened to the full lesson intently 4 times before my mind began to wander. I did get a few words, one or two repeated chunks that I thought I would look up after but my understanding was basically zero. Not concerned, because I was expecting that and I'd work on it again once home and once I had the book in front of me.

Reigning in my thoughts, I did listen to the lesson another 5-6 times on the walk back with some more shadowing. But never really complete active shadowing. When I got home I had the intent to sit down, go over the lesson and exercises. But my wife interrupted me and asked me to brainstorm with her on a business project we have.

I asked for a few minutes, worked the Assimil lesson for a few minutes but noticed the different (to me!) pronunciations of ق in the lesson, off I went to first look for an IPA guide or the pronunciation for a specific word in wiki dictionary... and then I looked for videos on the pronunciation of |q|.

So, I've been completely derailed - but I did get to go over the lesson completely (stopping and restarting after each new sentence) only working on the sound and meaning. Not yet shadowing, not yet really reading the Persian text. And here, I thought I could pause for a few minutes and talk with my wife about our project.

Twenty minutes in, I'm teasingly accusing her of not having returned a relevant book called Traction (really a great read for startups) which we can't find in the house. And we don't know if I had it last, or if we lent it, but then we notice that a few other books aren't in their place...

Well, we are now off into the deep dive of looking in boxes in the garage to find some business books - oh, and in the meanwhile, I found some unopened boxes of language books that I was also looking for. We unpack and arrange things for about an hour. The pile of books that are to be given away has grown with other stuff. And I suggest we pack all that, leave the newly opened boxes on the dining room table, and take this stuff to the local thrift shop.

And we are off to drop off books and junk and ... of course, to look around at the thrift shop where we found a few bookcases - that we didn't buy.

This meandering story takes us back home. I now have lots of books to put away. I did find the book I was looking for and the Assimil lesson is still waiting for me to complete. THat and all the other things I think I can get done today. And I still haven't even finished the Anki cards for the day.

Distractions. Distractions on my way to Persian.

Status
Podcast 23 / review 12
Assimil 32
TYB 16
Anki 811 in review / 930 cards

[zenmonkey]

Persian

90 days!
Definitely slowed down this last month as my work/life balance went sideways.

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

Last months goals

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

Results this last month
Anki - 844 active cards / 960 cards in the stack - so not quite there.
TYB - 3 lessons, Assimil - 6 lessons, Podcast - 9 lessons - which is a bit more than 1 lesson every two days.
and I missed the challenge by 1 day because yesterday I only did 10 minutes of study.

The abjad is pretty mature, and I'm reading a bit faster.
And not planned - I added a few sessions with a teacher.

And can I speak? Not really, but my teacher was impressed a few times when I was answering questions. And I now have the assignment to write a little conversation. I feel I'm at the cusp of learning rather than actually learning.

New Goal:
Keep a study/work/life balance. Meh, can do better! But this last month was generally better.
I'll be planning a trip to Europe in the next month so I want to make sure I can balance that too, along with the start-up course I started managing this last week.

1) Keeping with TYB/Assimil/Chai podcast - any combination of 20 lessons or podcast or weekly classes.
2) Anki add another 300 active cards.

And I adjusted Anki so that the 'look forward ahead' during the review session is only set to 10 minutes (instead of 20) - so I'll split my anki time into at least two sessions a day. Random metric - I'm now approaching more reviews with Persian than all the reviews I did with any other language.

Status
podcast 21
TYB 17
Assimil 34
Anki 844 reviews / 960 cards
Fun factor: 8/10

[Gordafarin2]

And part of the problem is the print size - it looks like this "می" to me. That's annoying.

This is the bane of my existence. There's really no excuse for it in an instructional book, they should have typeset it better... but I'm sorry to say that small font size is a very common problem for Arabic script. I keep my browser zoom at +10% or +25% on Persian websites, but it's even more annoying on multilingual websites where there will be Persian mixed in with English, so if you zoom, the English text gets huge. (There are a few browser extensions that can help with this, but last time I tried they didn't work well with sites like Youtube which is where I need it most)

It's to do with the vertical space that the letters take up - there are larger ascenders and descenders compared to the 'body' of the letter, so a 12-pixel-high Perso-Arabic word looks smaller than a 12-pixel-high English word. Always makes me feel like it's time to get reading glasses...