Not all those who wander are lost

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
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Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Sep 11, 2021 2:03 am

Well, I had a crummy day today, and it had nothing to do with language learning.

I am not a fan of San Francisco. The place has always seemed pretentious to me. I guess that's because I live in San Jose, a nearby, bigger, poorer city. Many people from San Francisco always want to be cooler than you, always a better vegan, always a better feminist, always a better defender of gay rights than you are, whoever you are. Oh, and they have such an interesting history. I find this tiresome.

My daughter-in-law is from an old Chinese family there, and she is a delightful human being, so I know that I am generalizing horribly about city with many nice people in it.

Anyway today, I had to make a trip to San Francisco. The traffic was bad, as always, but I got to the Philippine consulate on time. My wife and daughter had business there.

I needed to use the toliet and set out to find one in a city that fears homeless people using toilets above all else. It is a running family joke that there are no toilets for visitors anywhere in San Francisco. I am glad to buy a cup of coffee or something to get the right to use the toilet, but today was not a day to do that. McDonalds told me that their toilets were closed and laughed at me when I asked where there might be a place with a toilet. I went to Starbucks. A nice young woman at Starbucks suggested that there was a bathroom I could use about 3 blocks away. I took off in that direction, more and more uncomfortable. I got near to where the reported restroom was, and started to look. I saw none. A young man who was sweeping a street told me, "yeah, it's right over there" and pointed. I went where he pointed and found a building with open doors and open restrooms within sight in the back... I went in and walked toward them and suddenly a large white man with no mask stepped in front of me and asked me, "Who the f**k do you think you are?" I replied that I thought I was Steve. He was a head taller than me and a lot broader than me, and stepped up to me about 6 inches from my chest and said, "What the f**k to you think you are doing?" I was quite uncomfortable by this time and I didn't want to get hit by a mad man, so I took a step to the side and told him that I intended to use the public toilets. He snarled at me, "Can't you see this is a construction site?" "You are trespassing. Get the f*** out of here." No signs. No barriers. Nothing but an open door and open restroom doors. I looked longingly at the empty toilets and backed out. He was bigger than me and a couple of decades younger. He yelled that there were no toilets anywhere in this part of town as I left. I was desperate at this point and I consided using the open door of the "construction site" for my needs, but also considered that this might get me arrested... I also considered that the big white guy might be crazy, and that it really was a public toilet, but that he might kill me.

I continued to look again for a toilet. I asked a woman walking down the street, and she looked afraid and didn't answer. I tried to speak to a man and he walked faster to get away. Thousands of people were showing up to work around me, and I suspect that they all had access to toilets. I noticed that there was a strange looking green box, about human sized, about 3 meters from where the woman wouldn't answer me. It said something about toilet and automatic cleaning, and only one person a time. It had an electronic lock and it wouldn't open. I asked another passerby, who said that the toilet was locked until 9AM. I had 15 increasingly desperate minutes waiting for 9AM. At 905, it still wouldn't open, and a custodial person came out of a building and told me that the toilet was broken, I told him I was desperate, and he told me to enter his place of business and tell the custodial office to let me into the staff bathroom. I did, they did, and I at last got to use a bathroom. A nice bunch of Hispanic men in a sea of nonsense. I passed by the big, aggressive jackass as I was leaving the restroom in the basement. He rolled his shoulders some and kept walking, very satisfied with himself.

I know that the sample of people I interacted with was not probably a good example of people in San Francisco, but I interacted with several nasty people. Nobody cared if I lived, died, or dirtied my pants in public. I know that cities can be unfriendly, but I have never had such a run of unhelpful people before anywhere on earth.
I don't care if the whole place falls into the sea tonight.

I did not leave my heart in San Francisco.
I do not dream of warm San Francisco nights.
I will not wear flowers in my hair when I have to go back.

My daughter-in-law is from San Francisco, and I will call her in New York to get advice before I go back. I noticed a lot of construction sites with porta potties in the city; maybe I can get a trailer and tow one behind my car for my next trip into that miserable city by the Bay.

I have to make another trip there for more consulate business in about 10 days. I've got to check on that porta potty idea.
Last edited by sfuqua on Sat Sep 11, 2021 4:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.
12 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Sep 11, 2021 2:58 am

After that off-topic rant, I hope somebody is still reading.
I have been thinking of dropping everything but Old English, or maybe Old Norse and Old English.
I use language learning to escape the annoying modern world, these are good languages to do that.
I seem to have trouble keeping a three language rotation going, one is always getting left behind, but I seem to be able to do two.
It's strange; these languages bring back memories of adventures I've read by Bernard Cornwell and others, but I'm not reading anything like that right now... Lately I'm reading history. It is peaceful to listen to an old history book while walking. I missed my walk today, and I think I'm going to listen to a book falling asleep tonight.

My recent favorite book is BARBARIAN MIGRATIONS AND THE ROMAN WEST, Halsall, Guy. Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks) . Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. He takes the interesting view that the barbarians moved in to save Europe as the Empire collapsed, which is not the viewpoint that I got taught in school. Interesting...
Old English is very cool. It is a beast of an inflected language, but there is enough familiar vocabulary that it also seems surprisingly easy from time to time. :D
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

DaveAgain
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Sep 11, 2021 3:53 am

sfuqua wrote: He takes the interesting view that the barbarians moved in to save Europe as the Empire collapsed, which is not the viewpoint that I got taught in school. Interesting...
I think at one point the various German tribes were desperate to cross the Rhine to avoid an eastern threat, Huns?
1 x

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Sep 11, 2021 4:29 pm

Yeah, were they pulled or were they pushed? Or did they just get the bright idea to migrate?

I remember one teacher talking about the "fall of the Roman empre" saying, "the question isn't why it fell, but rather, why did it last as long as it did." :D
My book starts out by talking about how hard and slow communication was, and how hard it was to get any order from Rome obeyed way out in the provinces... :o

Maybe I can play around with Gothic a little bit... :D
Last edited by sfuqua on Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
3 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1961
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Sep 11, 2021 4:47 pm

sfuqua wrote:My book starts out by talking about how hard and slow communication was, and how hard it was to get any order from Rome obeyed way out in the provinces... :o

I've just been reading a novel about some Germans who went to the US by sailboat, and came back to Germany by steamer. The trip out was 60 days, the trip back 10.
2 x

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IronMike
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby IronMike » Sun Sep 12, 2021 12:37 am

sfuqua wrote:I needed to use the toliet and set out to find one in a city that fears homeless people using toilets above all else. It is a running family joke that there are no toilets for visitors anywhere in San Francisco.
...
I have to make another trip there for more consulate business in about 10 days. I've got to check on that porta potty idea.

We had something similar to this in our survival kits back when I was flying in the Air Force. Buy a few of these for your next trip?
5 x
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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:35 am

One fairly big development in my anki setup led to what may be an improvement. I lost my whole "Whale Road" deck.
It was a pretty stupid process.
First, I noticed a bug in anki 2.1.44; they asked me to try 2.1.45.
I imported my deck into 2.1.45 and noticed that the decks were mixed up. I figured out how to avoid the bug (an interaction between anki and espeak NG). I fixed my deck, and it still seemed messed up. I ran check database, exported my total deck and overwrote my good copy, reimported it and noticed that it was more messed up than ever... Cards with the wrong types. Cards in the wrong deck, total mess.
I realized that I had just hosed my records of several months of reviews. I found some backups and imported them into 2.1.45, which promptly messed them up. I tried this several times, each time ending up with a messed up deck and with anki deleting one of my old backups.
2.1.46 was released and I realized that I had no good complete copy of my decks that was less than three months old. I spent a day trying to fix the mess that 2.1.45 had made of my deck. 2.1.46 worked fine, but I decided that the deck was more trouble than it was worth to fix.

Why didn't I downgrade early in this process? Why didn't I save a copy of the collection outside of the automatic backup system at least once a week? Why didn't I pay attention to what I was doing and not just bounce from one automatic response to another?

I just don't know. The lesson for me was... don't trust that anki is always working. Keep backups several places. Never let anki's automatic backup system eat up the last copy of a backup file that you might need.

And the big one....Think! Don't just whack at things!

And to think, during my midlife crisis when I stopped teaching for a few years, I used to be in charge of the team at NASA Ames that ran the network for 2.5 billion dollars worth of supercomputers.


I rebuilt the big set of decks in OldEnglish, Irish, and Norse, and I left a lot of random stuff out that had been in the deck before. I made some changes. My Irish deck is streamlined most of all. I stuck to the cards which cover Irish the way that the few remaining native speakers speak it. So, right now, I am working through some material that I have already covered before. It is easy, but I feel like a lot of things are falling into place much better the second time around. Maybe it is a good idea to start over every once in a while.
I'm moving very fast and should be caught up in a week or two.

Now back to the Whale Road deck...
5 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Sep 12, 2021 3:07 pm

I was noticing something this morning as I was reviewing Old English in bed...
I have moved the decks around so that I am reviewing and thoroughly learning the paradigms, declensions, and conjugations first before I am pushing very far into learning sentences. And it is really opening up my comprehension of OE.

I have always wondered why teachers of highly inflected languages usually start off by teaching paradigms, etc. It has nothing to do with comprehensible input or modern theories of language acquisition. I have often thought that it would probably make sense to study these things much later, after a lot of exposure to the language.

My recent experience, this morning, makes me think that I was exactly wrong, and that the old, traditional teachers have a point.

For a highly inflected, dead language, knowing the paradigms can make the language much more transparent.
Now, centuries of students have complained about declensions and conjugations, and they are only a small part of learning a language to a high level, but these inflections carry so much information that it is really useful to learn them in the early stages of learning a language. Perhaps teachers need to give example sentences to demonstrate to students why the paradigms are so important.

Anyway today I realized how much my Old English is improving by pounding paradigms into my head...
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6298

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:02 pm

I never mention Tagalog. I've been speaking it for 37 years. I am far from a native speaker of it; my accent shows up within a sentence or two. I think I make few actual mistakes, but I do stay with a subset of the grammar generally. Most people do, most of the time, but I probably don't switch to the deep stuff when I should. I lack an academic register, but many native speakers are weak on this too. In some ways my Tagalog is awesome, but don't send me in as a spy and expect me not to get caught. :D

Anyway all of my other language learning takes place in a steady envronment of Tagalog input. My wife and I talk in it some, and I have a steady diet of Tagalog on the TV. I have watched 113 episodes of one of the classic teleserye during the past 2 weeks, which comes out to at least 75 hours. :o

So I am getting a lot of Tagalog input all the time, and I have a beautiful near-native-speaker who will talk to me in Tagalog whenever I want, about 75 centimeters away as I write this...

If input is all you need, I would have been C2 in Tagalog years ago. :lol:
10 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6298

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Tue Sep 14, 2021 6:01 pm

I like t.o tell bad stories about myself s well as good ones, in case there is somebody out here who pays attention to my ramblings too much.

I am a recent convert to the "learn your declensions and conjugations early" camp. Knowing this stuff helps so much to make the sentence transparent.
Armed with this new viewpoint, I proceeded to make THE WORST ANKI DECK I EVER MADE. And I have made some bad ones. :lol:

I failed in one of the fundamental characteristics of good anki, the idea of the answer card being only one thing.

Believe it or not, I made a bunch of cards that were two way, front to back and back to front. I had many to one cards, no real problem here --and then I had one to many cards. These cards were awful, and I actually pounded on them for an hour before I noticed, "why are all these cards blowing up into leeches?"

Of course to answer in one direction I had answer with a word or ending, the other way, I had to answer with a whole list of uses. Anki is at its happiest with one thing at a time on a given card. :o

A little shuffling of fields and I have some completable cards.

I feel better now.

I am going to take a shot at trying to complete the SuperChallenge, only concentrating on Spanish. I have a shot. Whatever I do with my deck, my reading and listening is going to be in Spanish for a while... I'm not sure I'm going to try to finish my Spanish and French Assimil courses. They would help for when I switch to French concentration later, but there is only so much time in the day, and I am pretty busy surprisingly :D
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...


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