Saya suka Indomie: Learning Indonesian. Also working on French & German.

[Deinonysus]

Very cool, Axon! I'll need to check out his videos when I get the chance!

I just had my second German class yesterday morning. I'm realizing that I'm significantly more advanced than most of the other students, but I think that there's still a lot that I can get out of the class. The professor explained things about past participles that I had never quite put together:

• Participles of strong verbs always end in -en. (verbs are strong if the past participle changes vowels from the present tense there is any vowel change at all, like "I sing -> I have sung" in English, which is very similar in German: „ich singe“ -> „ich habe gesungen“)
• Participles with inseperable prefixes never get a „ge-“ in the beginning (ich habe verstanden)
• Participles with seperable prefixes do get a „ge-“ in the beginning (ich bin aufgegangen)
• Participles based on Latin words generally do not get a „ge-“, and generally end in „t“ (ich habe studiert)

This all made sense to me intuitively but I had never quite figured out the general rule.

I'm sure that I have plenty of holes like this from being self, and hopefully this class will fill a lot of them. I'm sure the speaking and writing practice will help a lot too. I think I've already gotten used to my professor's American accent, and thankfully the air conditioner was off, so I could understand almost everything he said in German.

I'm not too nervous anymore about keeping up with the class. I don't think I should have an issue keeping up with Indonesian for the next couple of months.

I'm exactly 20% of the way to a golden Indonesian tree. I've basically carved it into six sections. I have the first section up to level 4 out of 5, and I'm almost done getting the second section up to level 3. Then I'll get the second section to 4, and then start working on the third section.

[Deinonysus]

Well unfortunately, my Duolingo use has fallen off hard at an inopportune time. I don't think that anything really sticks in my head until level 3, but I have a big section that I left off at level 2 last week and I haven't really looked at it since then. This messed up the spaced repetition that I was going for. I wish there were a way of resetting individual skills without resetting the entire tree.

I'm still adjusting to my new schedule with my German class and piano lessons, and I'm not getting a lot of bandwidth for Duolingo. Fortunately, I've kept up with Pimsleur since my commute time hasn't changed, although I have been repeating lessons much more than necessary.

I got a wonderful book of easy piano pieces by great composers and I fell in love with a very short and simple piece by Béla Bartók called "Lost Doll" from his first volume of For Children (probably both translations from Hungarian; he did eventually move to the US but I think this was written before that). I ended up ordering a copy of book 1 of his Mikrokosmos, which starts out very easy and gets progressively harder.

My interest in Bartók got me interested in the Hungarian language (this is why we can't have nice things). I watched some videos and did the first Duolingo skill, but I really only wanted a taste of the language. It has a reputation for being insanely difficult and I'm not planning on tackling it head-on any time soon. But if I stay as interested in Bartók as I am now, it will definitely move up a bit on my list of languages to get around to eventually!

After I wrote the above, I started easing back in to Duolingo Indonesian and I guess and it got into my head a bit better than I thought. I'm almost to the second checkpoint, and once I hit that I'll do a lot of review to get the material solidified even better. That would be as good a stopping point as any, but I really do want to keep going until I exhaust the beginner resources I'm using.

[MattNeilsen]

My interest in Bartók got me interested in the Hungarian language (this is why we can't have nice things).

This felt like reading something straight out of my personal log. I laughed quite a bit. Thanks for that

As an aside, I wish I had your drive to do Duolingo. I feel like it's a good resource, but for some reason, I just can't seem to get motivated to do much of it. I do 1-2 lessons a day (literally just enough to keep my streak alive) and that's it. Preference is a fickle thing.

[Deinonysus]

Well, I've actually been in a bit of a Duolingo rut. I'm trying to get back into it right now and refresh what I've started to forget. I'm using duome.eu/deinonysus (you can replace with your own username to check your own progress) to see how much I need to practice to get up to 100% strength. I got from around 85% to 92% over the last few days, and then hopefully I'll be able to get back on track and get to the 2nd checkpoint.

The Duolingo Indonesian team has been working hard implementing user feedback! I got 21 emails since yesterday that they've added new accepted answers based on my feedback. That's some good motivation to keep reporting problems as I see them!

[Deinonysus]

I think I've finally recovered from my Duolingo lapse. I think I've done enough review and now I've started making progress again.

I think this "side quest" that started out as casual interest in a new Duolingo course is turning into more of a long-term thing. I think I've made great progress in a month and a half, and I definitely want more. I found a good price for a "Like New" copy of Assimil L'indonésien on Amazon, so I should be getting that next month. It will be my first time using a resource in French. I might need to use a dictionary a lot towards the beginning, but I think that my French skills are up to the task.

My piano lessons are going well and I'm finding myself playing several times a day. It's great motivation to have a number of short full pieces by great composers that I can play whenever I want. This might be similar to how Esperanto kick-started my language learning hobby. You can do so much with so little and you can get instant gratification very early on, and that was the first foreign language I was ever able to think in.

[Adrianslont]

I think you will have no trouble using the French based Assimil course for Indonesian. I used it a bit and I wouldn’t describe my French as advanced. Between your current knowledge of BI and your French it will be quite doable, unless you are a person with zero tolerance for ambiguity - but those sorts of people seem to struggle with Assimil anyway.

Are you getting the audio with that?

[Deinonysus]

I think you will have no trouble using the French based Assimil course for Indonesian. I used it a bit and I wouldn’t describe my French as advanced. Between your current knowledge of BI and your French it will be quite doable, unless you are a person with zero tolerance for ambiguity - but those sorts of people seem to struggle with Assimil anyway.

Are you getting the audio with that?

That's good to hear! It's highly possible that I'm just less modest than you.

I think I'm a bit above average in ambiguity tolerance for this forum. Some people are super hardcore with Assimil, do several lessons a day, and try to memorize everything before moving on, but I just go through one lesson a day plus active wave if applicable. And I don't worry about memorizing anything. I'm just along for the ride.

I did get it with the audio. I got the superpack.

[Deinonysus]

I took a look at my copy of Roald Dahl's The Twits translated into Scots (The Eejits), which I picked up on a trip to Scotland, and I spent a lot of the morning researching the Scots leid. There's a very tempting book on Scots that isn't too expensive...

No, bad Deinonysus! Bad! You just bought an Indonesian book and it hasn't even arrived yet! Three languages are enough! Bad! Naughty!

I restarted Assimil Using French last night, taking it from lesson 1. I'm also doing the Active Wave for the basic Assimil French. If I'm going to be using a French book to study Indonesian, I'd might as well put in a bit of extra work in French. At one lesson a night, it will take me just over two months to finish it. Then it will be just over three months to get through L'indonésien (again, presuming that I do a lesson a night and don't get distracted).

I should have around 3 weeks left of Pimsleur. I'll finish it by the end of the month even if I take it slow. When I'm done, I think I'll get back to listening to my Harry Potter a l'école des sorciers audiobook.

My German class is pretty easy. I'm basically smurfing. I'm not really working on German every day. I'm just spending a couple hours a week completing assignments or studying new vocabulary as they come in. But even though it's light work for me because of my prior knowledge, I'm finding the class to be very valuable. It's filling in gaps and systematizing things that I may have gotten the gist of intuitively but didn't quite understand fully. I've started mulling over taking a B2 test when the class is over.

[Axon]

Lol, smurfing in a language class. Great expression.

A general question for you - how would you describe your French level and how does it impact your using a French-based Assimil? I'd like to do that but my French is almost entirely passive.

[Adrianslont]

Lol, smurfing in a language class. Great expression.

A general question for you - how would you describe your French level and how does it impact your using a French-based Assimil? I'd like to do that but my French is almost entirely passive.

I’m interested to hear how you find it, too, Deinonysus.

Axon, I mentioned above that I am confident Deinonysus will be fine. I used it a bit and my French is far from great and was worse then and found it quite doable. I only actually “did” a couple of dozen units, where I read the notes. The rest I listened to once in the car. At the time the later units were hard for me. I then picked out units I liked and listened to them a few times more times each. Totally non-standard approach to Assimil - more just like graded listening and podcasts - with the exception of those couple of dozen early units.

I think YOU, Axon, being the language learning gun that you are, having some French, plus your time in Indonesia would have no trouble at all using Assimil indonésien Sans Peine - you’re going to understand most of it without the recourse to the notes, anyway and the French explanations will fill in most gaps that you do experience. The rest? Gak apa apa!