Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

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MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Wed Aug 29, 2018 3:32 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 5 - twice) - 60 minutes
Duolingo - ~30 minutes
Anki - ~30 minutes (only reviewed, didn't make any cards)

Total study to date: ~33.5 hours

-------------------

My fiance and I got to have dinner last night with our friend in Monterey who teaches Hebrew at the DLI. We didn't discuss language too much (I know the last thing he probably wants to do is talk about work on a social visit!), but he gave me a couple pointers to help with pronunciation. I'm very grateful for his help and hope I can pick his brain more in the future.

As an aside: I had forgotten how much I enjoy learning languages. It's been several years since I've done any kind of focused effort on a language, and I regret that it took me this long to get back to it. Even something as simple as 5-10 minutes of Duolingo practice would have at least kept Spanish and Mandarin in my consciousness...but no matter, it's water under the bridge. Moving forward, the only habit I am resolved to maintaining is one of consistency. It might be 5 minutes of practice a day or it might be 2 hours, but I will make sure to do something every day as that's the foundation upon which major change is built.
0 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Wed Aug 29, 2018 7:55 pm

Quick update:

I've suddenly been hearing the distinction between "r" and "l" in my problem words far more consistently. I realized we have some words in English that have "l" at the end that behave similarly to the "reish" sound, like "seagull". When spoken quickly, the "ll" in seagull becomes somewhat of a guttural approximant instead of a clear lateral approximant (at least I think it does). Regardless, I've been hearing things more clearly, and that's what matters. Now, whether or not I can PRODUCE it better remains to be seen :)

Moral of the story: keep persevering. Light awaits at the end of the tunnel.
1 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Thu Aug 30, 2018 5:38 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 5 & 6) - 60 minutes
Duolingo/Clozemaster - 60 minutes
Anki - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~36 hours

------------------------

I might have started the Spanish and Mandarin trees in Duolingo yesterday... :) I'm a false beginner in both languages, so it was more just to give my mind a break. It was fun blasting through the lessons with minimal effort.

I think I might incorporate 5-10 minutes each day for Spanish and Mandarin to start getting the rust off of them, but they are in no way a priority. I'd like to come back to Spanish full-time in a year and a half or so (once Hebrew is - hopefully - at a solid B2), and then restart Mandarin after that. I suppose the nice part is that my languages are in fairly disparate families, so the interference effect should be less of an issue than if I were focusing on multiple Romance languages.

I don't think I've talked too much about why I'm learning/have learned the languages I have, but here they are:

English - Native language; grew up monolingual.

Spanish - I took Spanish for two years in high school. I enjoyed it and always did well on tests but never really developed much proficiency. Over the years, I've been to Mexico on multiple occasions and enjoyed the people and culture. Additionally, living in California means Spanish is always popping up in my life. Also, my sister is a Spanish teacher and is married to a bilingual Mexican man, so it would be fun to be able to converse fluently with them.

Mandarin - I took Mandarin for a semester in college and loved it. We had about 25 students in our class and everyone was either from China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan except for myself and one other girl (they were all taking the class either to learn how to write or just for easy credit). My "token white guy" status seemed to get me invited to every party, potluck, dinner, etc. which was awesome! I really developed an appreciation for the culture and the language, and that summer I had the opportunity to travel to Taiwan for a month with a native Taiwanese friend to visit his family. I'm 6'2" and white, so needless to say I was a bit of an oddity in rural Taiwan :) Unfortunately, I've let my Mandarin knowledge lapse over the years, but I've always thought about re-activating/re-learning it.

Hebrew - I mentioned earlier in my log that I used to be Christian and even went to a seminary/Bible college for two years. As such, I've always had an appreciation for Israel and a fascination with Hebrew. Though I'm no longer religious, I can still see a lot of value in religious systems, and I love to talk about religion, philosophy, theory of mind, worldviews, etc. Additionally, my fiance is Jewish and she understands a good amount of Hebrew, so I'd love for us to be able to share the language together (and eventually pass it on to future children). My fiance's best friend lives in Israel as well, so I know we'll be traveling there in the coming years. Lastly, my profession is in corporate sales, and Israeli tech is a fairly prevalent niche in Silicon Valley. I think learning Hebrew will be a really fun conversation starter in my business dealings.
4 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Fri Aug 31, 2018 3:42 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 7) - 30 minutes
Duolingo/Clozemaster - 150 minutes
Anki - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~39.5 hours

-----------------------

So I figured out in Clozemaster that the "Fluency Fast Track" was mostly picking sentences from the 101-500 Words category instead of the 1-100 Words category. I tried selecting the 1-100 Word category and it was as if all of a sudden I could understand Hebrew. Now I understand why Lawyer&Mom was talking about getting addicted to sentence reviews! I'm even ahead of Expugnator this week in Hebrew since I played so much yesterday :D
(By the way, if anyone wants to connect on Clozemaster my handle is the same as here - 'MattNeilsen')

With this newfound superpower, I'll definitely be using Clozemaster more in the coming weeks. The sentence count for the top 3 Most Common Words is as follows:

    1-100 Most Common Words - 647 sentences
    101-500 Most Common Words - 4,827 sentences
    501-1,000 Most Common Words - 4,599 sentences

That's a total of 10,073 sentences. My focus is going to be to get through those sentences as quickly as I can while still doing Pimsleur, Duolingo, and my Anki reviews (as well as creating new cards for the 625 Common Words list from Gabe Wyner). I feel like by the time I make it through those resources I should be in a decent place to start working through an audiobook (maybe the New Testament that Lawyer&Mom linked to earlier in the thread).
3 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

Lawyer&Mom
Blue Belt
Posts: 980
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2018 6:08 am
Languages: English (N), German (B2), French (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7786
x 3767

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Fri Aug 31, 2018 4:49 pm

In my opinion, Fluency Fast Track is for transparent languages only. French? No problem. Russian? After 10,000+ sentences, still a big nope.
1 x
Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Fri Aug 31, 2018 5:09 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:In my opinion, Fluency Fast Track is for transparent languages only. French? No problem. Russian? After 10,000+ sentences, still a big nope.


I'm really glad to hear this - I was beginning to question my ability to learn Hebrew :)
1 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:18 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 8 - twice) - 60 minutes
Clozemaster/Duolingo - 150 minutes
Anki - 40 minutes

Total study to date: ~43.5 hours

-----------------------

I'm getting really hooked on Clozemaster. I find that if I play it straight for around an hour, I start to get a buzz going in my head and I almost feel like I can see the structure of the sentences forming (like the code is going through my head in the movie The Matrix). It occurred to me that my learning style in L1 is usually initially through massive input, then once I start to spot patterns I'll do an intensive study in a particular area. I think Clozemaster is operating in a similar fashion. I'm stuffing a huge amount of comprehensible sentences into my head, and as I start to see more and more of the patterns I'll spend time intensively studying a few of them.

I finished the first 8 lessons of Pimsleur, so I need to coordinate with my fiance to start listening to the rest of Level 1. I have mixed feelings about Pimsleur. On the one hand, it's a good tool for speaking practice, pronunciation, (limited) listening comprehension, and simply getting the reps in. On the other hand, there is minimal instruction given for problematic phonemes (like the "ʁ" sound), and I find it really hard to remember some words without being able to see them spelled. However, I've always thought of myself as a strong visual learner, and I think this is good practice in getting outside my comfort zone and trying new things. I plan to go through the first 30 lessons and re-evaluate at that point.
2 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Sun Sep 02, 2018 6:11 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Clozemaster/Duolingo - 120 minutes
Anki - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~46 hours

----------------------

Busy day yesterday. I got about an hour of review in the morning, and then I had to sneak my Clozemaster reviews in throughout lots of little breaks. We have friends staying with us for the weekend, so I sense my language learning is going to be reduced.

REQUEST FOR YOU ALL
If anyone knows of an audiobook for Lord of the Rings in Hebrew (or really any other long series), I would be most grateful to hear about it. I really want to try the L-R Method as I think it would be a great fit with my personality. I'm planning to start with the New Testament unless I can find another fictional series.
0 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Mon Sep 03, 2018 4:10 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Clozemaster/Duolingo - 60 minutes
Anki - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~47.5 hours

------------------------

I found out my fiance only has Pimsleur 1 in Hebrew, not 1-3. I'm going to need to revise my plan of attack for listening/speech skills. Maybe I'll work through some of the FSI lessons or the Routledge Hebrew online sections (or maybe HebrewPod101?). I'll also look into library memberships in other states - maybe I can get Level 2 & 3 that way.
0 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100

MattNeilsen
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Languages: English (N)
Hebrew (studying - beginner)
Spanish (passive, beginner)
Mandarin (mostly forgotten)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8869
x 183

Re: Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

Postby MattNeilsen » Tue Sep 04, 2018 3:28 pm

Yesterday's activity:

Clozemaster/Duolingo - 60 minutes

Total study to date: ~48.5 hours

----------------------

I hope those of you in the US enjoyed a nice holiday weekend!

Clozemaster seems to be coming along nicely. I've completed about 40% of the 1-100 Words section, so I decided to switch to answering with Text Input instead of Multiple Choice. It's definitely forcing me to pay more attention and improving both my recall and my spelling. I'll see how it goes over the next couple of days, but I think this is a good rhythm (i.e. front load a bunch of sentences with Multiple Choice to expose myself to the patterns, then switch to Text Input to ensure I actually know the material).

I need to make sure I don't neglect Duolingo too much. The lessons are easy to go through because of the transparency of the app, so it's a good complement to improve my understanding of Clozemaster.
0 x
Hebrew
Pimsleur Level 2: 21 / 30
FSI : 3 / 40
Clozemaster 101-500 Most Common Words: 1600 / 4825
Srugim Season 3: 1 / 15
1100 hours of study/input : 160 / 1100


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