malach's log - Bengali and German

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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Fri May 01, 2020 6:08 pm

Bengali

I signed up for the Super Challenge, so I'll keep track of films/books here.

Today I have watched দুই কন্যা (two daughters) by Satyajit Ray, to get the films count off to a start. I don't think the films will be a problem, given a modicum of discipline. But I will have to find some more films. Youtube has some content, but I will expand on my DVD collection. Harder will be the books - averaging 9 pages a day will require some substantial speed up as the months go by. I have lots of content, most of it currently beyond me, which is what I hope to finally fix with this challenge!!

SC: 1/5/20 -> 31/12/21
  • Books: 0/100
  • Films: 1/100

Edit: hit the wrong ই key
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Mon May 04, 2020 7:34 pm

Bengali

I have restarted the Life in the UK book I had begun earlier in the year. It's been a while since I last touched it. In the last 3 days I've managed about 5 pages! Even though it's a dual-language book, there is not a simple relationship between English and Bengali sentence structure so I often get stuck trying to unravel sentences - even if I have each word translated the overall meaning may not be clear. Hence the relatively slow progress.

As I'm focussing on reading now, I thought I would try one of these tools which highlight your words. LWT would not immediately install for me, so I'm experimenting with Foreign Language Text Reader. I can see the attraction, having the words and meanings available a mouse-roll away. I'm going to try this out with some news stories and see how I get on.
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Tue Oct 06, 2020 12:18 am

It's been a while since I posted here. I have been distracted by other interests than language learning, but I always seem to come back around. I made a start on studying Middle and Old English. Then whilst thinking about Old English, I had an imaginary conversation about explaining the grammar to someone, and ended up comparing it to Bengali, and then I wanted to look back at that language, and now I'm ... back in a little German phase.

German

I have started working on my reading skills. I have re-read most of Brian Smith's first Intermediate Reader, and found that relatively comfortable, only having to check one or two words a page. Actually, adjectives/adverbs seem to be lacking the most - angrily, sadly etc.

But what I really want to do is read books, so I started in on the translation of Tolkien's Children of Húrin that I bought a while ago, in an intensive style. I have almost finished the first chapter, which contains about 5,700 words. I started by reading the whole chapter through, and I could follow the gist, partly from recognising the German, and partly from being familar with the English version. Then I have gone through writing down every unknown word on each page, looking up those words, and then re-reading the page to make sure I get a good sense of what is meant.

I have been pleasantly surprised to see I'm writing out less than 10% of the words on the page. Each page has about 300 words, and the most I've written down is 25. That's not quite enough for comfortable reading, but it's a lot better than I expected. And of course the words are repeating as I move forward, so I am learning them as I go.

Although in the interim I've not really been "studying" German, I have been casually reading posts in German on social media and similar places, and I guess that has helped. I'm going to carry on with the intermediate readers, as a 'quick read' in German, but I will press forward with this book and see how it goes.

Old English

Well, I developed this wish to be able to read as much English literature as I could, going back through time. For Middle English, I have started in on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I'm currently half-way through, and it has gradually become less of a struggle and more pleasant to read. The main danger are all the 'false friends', words whose meanings are completely different in modern English.

And I have started in on Old English, with Baker's book, Introduction to Old English. I have completed the earlier grammar chapters (5-12), and now am in the middle of the prose anthologies. It's quite enjoyable, although I'm having to read the anthologies 'intensively', with lots of looking up of vocabulary.
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Mon Oct 12, 2020 1:28 am

German

I have managed to continue with my reading.

I completed Brian Smiths Intermediate Reader, this is 77 pages, around 23,000 words. It's mostly comprehensible to me. I should probably try to make something of the recordings he provides, to work on listening as well.

Also continued with Die Kinder Húrins. The number of unknown words is around 6%. I did find myself looking up some words in chapter 3 I had come across in chapter 1(!) but then there are other words I seem to have already learnt well.

  • Chapter 1: 19 pages, 326 unknown words out of ~5,700 words, ~94% known
  • Chapter 2: 8.5 pages, 120 unknown words out of ~2,500, ~95% known
  • Chapter 3: 5 pages, 68 unknown words out of ~1,500, ~95% known
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Sat Jun 12, 2021 10:26 pm

This last year's been a busy mix of 'life' and work and I left off language learning for a bit.

Still, summer's here, and I have a few 'quiet' months - 'life' permitting, of course! I had an idea to implement some stemming algorithms for Bengali, having read some descriptions of them, and this seems the right time to attempt it. It's a perfect combination of wanting to code something and also delve into parts of Bengali grammar in detail.

Bengali

With that comes the on-going wish to be more 'capable' with the language. And currently I'm thinking audio - being able to understand someone speaking. I already had a bookmark for someone on youtube who has recorded many hours of programming tutorials in Bengali. This is a subject I know well enough, and its presentation is quite predictable so, when listening to the tutorial, I feel I'm close to understanding what he's saying. It's still work to 'tune my ear' to pick out the words, especially the verbs and function words, and I have a lot of vocabulary to learn.

So, those videos are the main focus. But I also want to 'loosen my tongue', and am looking at Glossika - hear English sentence, hear Bengali sentence, speak it, repeat, it's not a bad pattern.

I also found that clozemaster now has Bengali listed! That wasn't there last year.

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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:59 pm

Bengali

I seem to have effortlessly slipped back into language-learning mode! I recorded over 10 hours this past week, mostly on Glossika and a Youtube programming series.

For Speaking, I have reached 100 sentences, with over 2000 repetitions in Glossika. I subscribed for one month, and will see how I get on. Repetition has to be important, and this will, to some extent, provide structure and accountability, although I'm sure repetitions could be achieved similarly by reading out loud. The other, probably more significant, added value with Glossika is getting to hear the native speaker's version.

On Listening, I'm now 5 hours into the C-programming course, and slowly beginning to 'tune in' to what I'm hearing. The material is quite repetitive, not only because it is programming but because the tutor is re-using the same examples across videos. So I've learnt to recognise quite a few words to do with arithmetic and operations. But more important I feel are the repetitions of the basic 'doing' and 'seeing' verbs.

I have done about 15 minutes with Clozemaster each day. There are so few Bengali learners that I happen to be top of the list for this month!

I also found another new resource, a reddit thread for writing Bengali and getting corrections! /r/BanglaStreak
So I've started writing a few sentences on there too.
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 am

Bengali

I seem to be managing a consistent 2-3 hours a day so far.

Glossika is feeling productive - it's the only "comprehensible" thing I have available. I've done 200 sentences now in A1 level, and pretty much all the words are familiar. But the repeated simple sentence structures are useful. After learning the new sentences, I do the revisions 'blind' - not reading the screen unless I'm stuck. And I can say most sentences before the Bengali is spoken (I increased the delay a little).

For listening, I'm now up to 68 of these programming videos. It's probably only 10-12 hours in total, but after the fifth, I think, repetition of a basic program structure in pseudo-code, then a flowchart, then c-code, I'm getting the hang of his script. All those "do this", "see this", "compare here" phrases are starting to sound clearer. In places at least.

I had a mini-breakthrough today - there was something he was saying repeatedly which I could not understand. Sounded like "khash" - the closest word in my dictionary is "khashi", but that means a castrated goat! Probably not what was intended when referring to a block of computer code ... Anyhow, today I realised he was probably saying "kaj", meaning work or a task. And that made clearer what he was saying for larger parts of the video.

Something amusing happened as I was writing today - I passed the passage through google translate and was alarmed to see some strangeness in the translation: "নুর একটা শব্দ" I had written, "only one word". "নুর", that's "only" right? right? let me check this ... why isn't it in the dictionary? "nur", "only" ... oops, wrong language, that's German!
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Wed Jun 30, 2021 12:32 am

Bengali

I'm continuing to take advantage of my recent burst of motivation, and completed 2+ hours a day over the past week. This has been 1 hour of Glossika + 1 hour of listening to C-programming videos + some miscellaneous stuff.

Work is more-or-less out of the picture from now to October, so, unless something else comes up (it usually does!), I'm hoping to keep this pattern for a few months. But I'm also going to add in an hour of reading. I like reading. The other two activities I think are essential, but they still feel like 'training'. I'm rarely unhappy if I read (and understand) something!

Listening - seven hours of C-programming videos (+ listening to Glossika) this week. I feel I picked the right material with these videos. The occasional wins I mentioned before on understanding a new part have become more frequent, and I'm getting a good grip on the verbs he is using. All right, so I have learnt the words গৌণিক and মৌলিক ('factorial' and 'prime'), which are not "high-frequency" vocabulary I guess, but it's all part of the mix! When he talks a little more deliberately, explaining line-by-line how the program works, I can now more-or-less follow him word-by-word, which is already encouraging progress. But then he starts talking more generally, and the syllable rate gets too much for me.

Reading - I realised I read Bengali quite slowly - I did a little test, and it's 30 words a minute. OK, so I'm not understanding much of that either, but I would like to improve the speed. Also, reading is my favourite language-related activity. I had a link to StoryWeaver, and they have a lot of Bengali books for (free) reading. So I'm (re-)starting there, from the very beginning. I plan to finish the 26 'Emergent'-level books in the next few days. Why start from the beginning? Well, I may know the words for 'factorial' and 'embassy', but somehow I didn't know the words for 'kite' and 'string'. And I do need to go over the simple sentence structures still, with different words. It's not that I don't know these structures, but there's a difference between being able to get something right, and not being able to get it wrong. Reading books which are easily understood should help improve my reading speed. Level 4 books include stories by Rabindranath Tagore - on a quick look, they didn't even look abridged - so this looks like being my main source of graded reading for a while.

Speaking - seven hours of Glossika this week, plus some reading aloud of texts. With Glossika, I can feel the earlier sentences becoming easier to say.

Vocabulary - I believe the above will naturally take care of repeated exposure to words and so learning vocabulary. But I am using Clozemaster each day and I also revived my Memrise account. I'm trying to train myself to spend time on these in the day rather than random internet browsing when I procrastinate to escape work... Actually, I'm surprised how often I seem to come across the same word on one of these sites as I have elsewhere. A few days ago I learnt the word for 'future' from a book, and then there it was in a Clozemaster sentence, and I even remembered it! It's a nice bit of reinforcement.

Writing - I do a little writing, and even posted a few pieces on reddit /r/BanglaStreak. But this is not my focus for now. It's still time-consuming, and I have to check many details of grammar.

German

I did try listening to some Rust programming tutorials in German. Like the Bengali C-programming videos, I think this will be an excellent source of comprehensible input. But I'm not going to distract myself with two languages for now.

I do almost daily read some German, as I follow some sources on Mastodon, and look up some words I don't know.
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Lycopersicon
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby Lycopersicon » Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:58 pm

malach wrote:Bengali

Reading - I realised I read Bengali quite slowly - I did a little test, and it's 30 words a minute. OK, so I'm not understanding much of that either, but I would like to improve the speed. Also, reading is my favourite language-related activity. I had a link to StoryWeaver, and they have a lot of Bengali books for (free) reading.


Thank you for this amazing ressource, what a fantastic website!
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malach
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Re: malach's log - Bengali and German

Postby malach » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:02 pm

Lycopersicon wrote:Thank you for this amazing ressource, what a fantastic website!

Glad to help! I'm pretty sure I came across it on this forum some time back - it has been sitting in my list of bookmarks for a while.
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