Not all those who wander are lost

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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 Jan 02, 2022 4:54 pm

I didn't really explain why I found my wife's idea so nice. Of course Spain is nice, and I would love to live there, but the past few months we have been just trying to get her through her heart disease alive and maybe get her back to work. Things seem to have settled down some these days; she'll be returning to the classroom tomorrow, and it is nice to see her daydreaming about long term plans.

I started reading Africanus: el hijo del cónsul this morning after Kanewai's comments in his log.https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=755&start=330 I'm a sucker for good historical fiction books.

When I grow up, I want to be like Kanewai and read in several different languages.

I finally have reached an age where I don't have to worry about what I want to be when I grow up; I'm retired. I guess I can worry about what languages to read in.:D
7 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 » Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:56 am

Well, I'm a pretty happy camper. My wife survived a day at school with no symptoms, and even walked briskly for 30 minutes during lunch. My daughter is back in school and has just become eligible for a covid booster shot as of this morning. The California rainy season continues to impress; it looks like my nightmares of the fire season from hell aren't coming true. Up until recently we had a huge number of crows around the Bay Area, way more than usual. Scientists were of the opinion that something about the bay area was attracting them during the drought.
Well, it's raining, and the crows are back to normal levels again. I guess they went home.
LIke the rest of the world, we await what this new wave of covid will bring. We're being careful, but not locking down. High quality masks and careful hand washing. We'll see.

I'm enjoying Africanus. It seems to be at a level where I can read it, and I enjoy historical fiction. One advantage of fooling around with a bunch of different languages is that one can start to see the patterns of how they are related. It is always a surprise to me to see how similar some of the distantly related Indo-European languages are. It is always a shock to me to discover features that are common to Irish and Spanish for instance. Proto-Indo-European must have been a beast of a language.

I continue to watch a couple of hours of teleserye every day on ABS-CBN from the Philippines. My wife and I continue to enjoy the current Viral Scandal series. There is just something about it that is edgier and more realistic than most of the other shows. Another show we watch is FPJs Ang Probinsyano. We Watch this show more to make fun of it than anything else. I'm not sure whose fantasy the show is, but it is pretty disconnected from reality. Plus it is stuck in the old set of standards about what proper behaviour is. You know, unfaithful husbands get forgiven, unfaithful wives die (or, as the family joke goes, they have to go to America alone). The main character is Cardo Dalisay, and he has been everything from undercover cop working in drag to maximum security prisoner, to guerilla leader. Recent episodes have included him riding around Ilocos Norte machine gunning hundreds of policemen, Cardo never needs to duck and he never misses. His wife got carried away and had sex with another man, and we said, well, she'll be killed soon. Sure enough, a week later she was shot about a hundred times with a machine gun in a firefight, and fell to the ground a gruesome, bloody mess. I guess she didn't get away with anything. :o Of course, the Philippines is still a place where the church can ruin your show by condemning it, so I guess if they have to show that somebody who has sex with someone other than their spouse doesn't live happily ever after. Unless they are a man.

I think we have roofs going up on all of the houses that lost their roof in the typhoon. All the extended family in Leyte complained that everything, including labour, cost too much (everybody else wants to get their roof replaced at the same time). I can surely say this -- it is way cheaper to put a roof on a house in Leyte than it would be in California. A lot of the family seems pretty traumatised, but I guess they just have to keep going.

Now, to go shadow some of Africanus
9 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 Jan 08, 2022 3:32 am

I finally parked my anki decks for Spanish and French. My idea of going through all of the Assimil with Ease and Using courses for these languages was just going too slowly. It was too easy and too slow. I should have just gone straight to the active wave from the first day. Pretty much the whole passive wave is not challenging enough to be interesting.
One of the things I was hoping to get out of ASSiMiL was a quick run through the grammar of each language. It occurred to me that I have another old anki deck that would do that. I made a deck a few years ago from a transcript of the Michel Thomas foundation, advanced, and builder courses for each language. I enjoy taking a document and trying to come up with the regular expressions to turn it into a bunch of cards. I've always liked the Michel Thomas courses for their succinct introduction to a language, although I wish the format of the courses were different. I could never stand to review the courses enough to learn from them properly, although they are good the first time through. Anyway these decks should give me a quick review of grammar, and also a review of the "phrasebook" type language that you find in the builder courses.
Cards made from Michel Thomas also have the advantage of being very fast to review. There is a lot to be said about anki cards that one can pound through at high speed. Cards with long sentences can----be-----so----slow.

I have been reading my old favourite the Aubrey Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. This set of 20 books offers up a slice of life aboard Royal Navy ships during the Napoleonic wars. I have the series in Spanish, and I think I know where to find the books in French that I don't have. I don't really plan to read the whole series in both languages, but there was a time when I read through these books in English and I didn't really pay that much attention to the modern world I was living in.

I have thought several times that I could jumpstart my French by reading a book simultaneously in Spanish and in French. If I read a chapter first in Spanish, it should make it easier to read in French. This hasn't worked very well when I've tried it before, but, so far, for Aubrey Maturin, it seems OK.

What is amusing to me is that a couple of years ago, I found the Spanish translation of these books pretty hard to read. Now they seem easy. I guess I learned something.

I'm pretty happy. I got rained on today while walking. I've walked in the rain before, of course, but this was the first time in years that rain started when I was a mile or so from home. In Samoa, the custom is that if you want to keep your dignity, you never run from the rain. I walked slowly back to the house, getting wetter every step.

My wife, my princess, is doing well. It is very difficult for her to be teaching these days with our current covid wave. Many students are sick, and many students are missing school. Kids are being sent home during the day if they are exposed. It is a complicated, epidemiological and political mess.
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...

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 » Mon Jan 10, 2022 4:24 am

I changed my "bars" in my signature to reflect what I'm working on right now. I had two big "total input" bars up, but it would take forever to reach there. Right now it looks like I haven't done much, because it is the first part of January, and I didn't record what I did the first few days. I'm going to try to update these every day, just so I can admire them. I have it set up now to do a half SuperChallenge in each language this calendar year. This should drag my French up to an advanced level. I'm going to concentrate on reading right now, because I know that I will improve fairly rapidly it I can keep up my extensive reading. It always seemed to me that I "acquire" reading ability pretty much the way that Krashen describes it. My listening comprehension is more problematic. In Spanish, I find things like the news or history podcasts pretty easy, but actors emoting in telenovelas can throw me for a loop. I also need a bit of time to switch gears when I hear an unfamiliar dialect. I'll take the ODP listening test in Spanish at some point, but it does take a couple of hours and it is not exactly fun.

I'm going to try to stay with the Aubrey Maturin series through the first few books. I think I'm getting good input from them for my French.

Of course these are translations of books in English, so at some point I need to get back to trying to read books originally written in French. I have French translations of a couple of García-Márquez's books; perhaps it would be useful to read them in Spanish first and then read them in French.
8 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 » Wed Jan 12, 2022 3:15 am

It looks like I'm already behind :D
Who cares, I just want to get as much French and Spanish read as I can.

It feels to me like the extensive reading is working for French exactly the way one might hope. I'm dragging my eyes over the sentences, not understanding several words very well, but understanding the whole sentence following the story. :D

One of the things I never understood before I tried doing extensive reading is the way that it takes several exposures to a word before it "sticks." One can't worry about incomplete comprehension on one's first exposure to a word. I tend to look up the meaning of words too much, which is sort of a waste of time. Memorising word lists can rapidly help one comprehend passages of the language. But it's not as fun as "just reading". And "just reading" works, as long as one is brave enough to just let it rip and read. As long as one can follow the story... :o
6 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...

Lawyer&Mom
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7786
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Jan 12, 2022 5:09 pm

I rarely look up words. A handful of times a year. But if I notice a word a bunch and it’s starting to bug me, I will. Don’t worry, your brain *will* remember the ones that it sees a lot but just can’t figure out. Trust the process! It works!
3 x
Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

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 » Fri Jan 14, 2022 2:40 am

I started off on a chapter in French today, and I had a miserable time. I couldn't follow the story, even though I had just read it in Spanish.
Frustrating. :o
Then, looking at your post, Lawyer&Mom, I decided to relax more about unknown words and start using a strategy I have tried before...
Whenever I can't follow a sentence, I just make up some meanings for the word, finish the sentence and keep reading. I think taking WAGs at the meanings encourages one to keep reading and seems to work pretty well for getting through the story.
The Aubrey-Maturin books have a ton of vocabulary pertaining to sailing ships, their parts, and how they manoeuvre. A lot of this is hard to follow in English for the nonspecialist also. Of course by halfway through the series, You could rattle off the commands to start the pursuit of the enemy and ready the cannons just as well as Jack Aubrey. You just pick it up, and I suppose this will work for French and Spanish also. Aubrey and Maturin, the ship's captain and the ship's physician, are avid musicians and it is fun to work through the pieces of classical music they play and talk about. It is also amusing to remember the changing degrees of respect for different composers. One of the strangest ones to me is how much "Old Bach '' has fallen out of fashion by 1800. Boccherini, cool, "Old Bach '', old fashioned and boring.
Later in the books, Jack Aubrey stumbles over Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, forgotten in a corner of a copiest's shop, and on an impulse buys it... and proceeds to spend the rest of his life practising it. As I understand, Hilary Hahn practices Bach every day, so I don't think he's crazy. During the books, as far as I know, the two never heard Beethoven. Some of the fan fiction attempts to tell what happened when the two old buddies finally hear him. I suspect they may have had seizures.
The other thing that is fascinating about these books is the utterly alien 19th century in which they take place. It's not that many generations back to this time, but what a strange place it would be to visit.
Anyway, I'm reading easily in French now, so let me get back to it. :D
9 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
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Jan 14, 2022 6:26 am

sfuqua wrote:The Aubrey-Maturin books have a ton of vocabulary pertaining to sailing ships, their parts, and how they manoeuvre. A lot of this is hard to follow in English for the nonspecialist also.
There are an awful lot of words where, when you meet them in other languages, you realise that you don't actually know what they are, you just have an idea.

For me much of the plant and animal kingdom falls into this class, along with mizzen and hawse! :-)
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 » Fri Jan 14, 2022 1:29 pm

While I lived in Samoa, I hung out with a bunch of yachties, people who circle the world in their private yachts. Some of these people are not wealthy at all; some would be homeless if it weren't for their yacht. I have heard some amazing stories.
I was always trying to talk my way on to a boat. I went day sailing several times, and I made one open ocean passage, between American Samoa and Western Samoa. It was a passage of about 90 miles, and it remains one of the great experiences of my life.
It was the one time in my life that I arrived in a country and was stamped as "crew" on my passport. :D
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8 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...

jackb
Orange Belt
Posts: 243
Joined: Thu Jun 06, 2019 2:04 pm
Languages: English (N), French (Intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12251
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby jackb » Fri Jan 14, 2022 3:06 pm

The Aubrey-Maturin books have a ton of vocabulary pertaining to sailing ships, their parts, and how they manoeuvre.


You can say that again. My mother suggested the first book to me as a young teenager and the nautical terms threw me for a loop. Having said that, I really should pick them up again. It still looks like something I would like.

One of the things I never understood before I tried doing extensive reading is the way that it takes several exposures to a word before it "sticks." One can't worry about incomplete comprehension on one's first exposure to a word.


I'm finding that I need to have multiple exposures even if I flash carded the word and can recall it. It's part of the reason I'm not so fond of flash cards. Who knows, maybe I'm still doing something wrong.
3 x


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