General language log

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sporedandroid
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Feb 08, 2023 6:48 am

It’s been a week of Finnish. I find I am finding some cards easier to remember. I think the deck for nurses is pretty decent because it’s good at testing basic grammar knowledge. If I vaguely know some words, but I mix up you/they or anything else I just fail the card. A lot of the cards are very similar, so I can’t rely rely on rote memory.

Since I’m a beginner I can’t really get much listening practice in. Unless music counts. What I do right now is watch learner videos that are in Finnish. I’ll watch them without subtitles first. My comprehension will vary a lot. Once in a while I can only catch a few words here or there and sometimes I can understand half of it or even most of it. Afterwards I’ll watch with subtitles and look up words that stand out to me or I don’t know. There’s usually bilingual subtitles, so my lack of grammar knowledge isn’t much of a problem. Right now when I come across good sentences, I make them into Anki cards. Since my level is still pretty low I have to reject a lot of sentences. I think that helps make my study sessions slightly more active.

I’m finding it hard to do things that will help me advance in Hebrew. The main thing that will help me advance is reading more, but even just reading some articles can be a challenge. I’m thinking of finding a matching audiobook and ebook. I’ve heard that helps people improve at reading. It could also help me get motivated to exercise more. Listening to podcasts helped me get motivated to exercise. Now that most podcasts aren’t really challenging for me, it isn’t as motivating.
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sporedandroid
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Thu Feb 09, 2023 7:09 am

I finally found some YouTube Finnish lessons. A lot of them actually go too slow for me, but at the same time the vocabulary can be a bit too advanced. They already feel fairly close to my level. I spent over an hour today exploring different videos for learning Finnish. I do seem to find a lot of videos that are aimed at immigrants rather than English speakers who want to learn Finnish one day. I just don’t think I’ll find Finnish lessons that are mostly in English helpful. It’s also less pressure to get the concepts they’re trying to teach right away. If I can follow along more or less I feel like the lesson is effective enough.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:10 am

I think I’ll just make a new Hebrew Anki deck. I’ll make it more suited to my level. I’ll try to make it more suited to reading and rereading rather than learning new vocabulary. I’ll probably have to keep experimenting with this new format. One issue is that it gets clunky fast. One issue I have is that a lot of unknown words or things I find challenging involve a lot of context. For now I have the main sentence, a collapsible field for more context and a link to the article or video where I originally encountered it. This still looks pretty clunky, so I’ll have to spend some time formatting it. No clue how well this format will work. So far it seems like I’ll end up with a lot of clunky cards. Maybe I’ll have to play around with intervals as well.

Right now all my Finnish decks are only meant to be used when I’m a beginner. I’ll probably delete them when the format is no longer suited to my level and my reviews pile up too much. Right now I’m failing a lot of the Finnish Anki cards because I still don’t get some very basic concepts. I’ll probably have to reset their ease eventually.

Luckily some of those YouTube Finnish lessons seem to teach them over and over. A lot of times they use a lot of gestures as well. I barely feel reliant on English. So far I like the beginner resources for Finnish. It does seem like it will be hard when I get to an intermediate level. I’ll just enjoy being a beginner for now.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sat Feb 18, 2023 9:39 pm

One thing that’s harder to do is logging my study time. I’ve already been slacking off on that anyways, but now I’m slacking off even more. I don’t have too many issues spending more time on Anki, but it’s a lot harder to log my time when it’s multiple languages and decks. I actually like having multiple decks because seeing a bunch of reviews on one deck really demotivates me. Right now I guess I don’t care too much about logging time because logging time was supposed to motivate me.

Making my own Anki cards for Finnish is still fairly challenging, so I don’t really do it regularly. The cards I do make for Finnish are better than my premade decks. One annoying thing about my premade decks is that they have production cards. I keep some of them around, but most of them have to get suspended. Since my Finnish cards get failed a lot, I don’t study new cards every day. I think I’ll start doing Clozemaster for both languages again.

The new Hebrew deck seems very manageable so far. Mainly because I hardly ever fail those cards. They’re just there to re-read things I’ve found challenging or tripped me up. I still add to my old Hebrew deck if I actually encounter an unknown word, but most of the time I’m just getting used to different word usages.
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Re: General language log

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Feb 18, 2023 10:08 pm

sporedandroid wrote:Making my own Anki cards for Finnish is still fairly challenging, so I don’t really do it regularly. The cards I do make for Finnish are better than my premade decks. One annoying thing about my premade decks is that they have production cards. I keep some of them around, but most of them have to get suspended. Since my Finnish cards get failed a lot, I don’t study new cards every day. I think I’ll start doing Clozemaster for both languages again.
The time spent making new cards is the thing that's stopped me using Anki in the past. Clozemaster.com, and other similar websites, that offer a ready-to-use option are a lot less hassle :-)
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Feb 22, 2023 5:09 am

DaveAgain wrote:
sporedandroid wrote:Making my own Anki cards for Finnish is still fairly challenging, so I don’t really do it regularly. The cards I do make for Finnish are better than my premade decks. One annoying thing about my premade decks is that they have production cards. I keep some of them around, but most of them have to get suspended. Since my Finnish cards get failed a lot, I don’t study new cards every day. I think I’ll start doing Clozemaster for both languages again.
The time spent making new cards is the thing that's stopped me using Anki in the past. Clozemaster.com, and other similar websites, that offer a ready-to-use option are a lot less hassle :-)

Unfortunately you can only study 30 sentences a day on Clozemaster, unless you get premium. At least Clozemaster makes it faster to make Anki cards. I know Clozemaster isn’t the most reliable, but it does give me good links to wiktionary. I like sentence mining from wiktionary because they give me good example sentences with a nice short explanation.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Feb 22, 2023 6:59 am

I’ve almost been studying Finnish for a month. Unsurprisingly I haven’t made much progress. Listening to Finnish is starting to feel different, especially songs I haven’t listened to in a while. That doesn’t really translate to better comprehension. Even before I “officially” started learning Finnish I noticed I was starting to understand sentence fragments or even super simple sentences once in a while. One thing I notice is that Anki cards that were super hard one day, will be relatively easy the next day.

I still find it fairly challenging to memorize all the basic grammatical concepts. One thing that helps is just noticing repeating patterns. Memorizing a chart will never work for me and I think it makes languages look scarier than they are. I find it pretty interesting to read about Finnish grammar on wiktionary. I also watch Finnish videos explaining Finnish grammar. Since they are aimed at learners they feel pretty manageable.

Like I said before they’re pretty hit or miss. Some are way too slow and dumbed down and some are too hard for me to understand. Today I watched a video on the partitive case. I still don’t fully get that concept. I’ll continue to watch videos on that if they pop up. The YouTube algorithm doesn’t know what to do with that YouTube profile I have. I exclusively use it to watch Finnish lessons/learner videos. It does recommend those videos, but I also get random English videos. A lot of times I get Finnish lessons in English/English videos explaining Finnish. I’m not sure how helpful those video would actually be for me. I think I’m pretty slow and inefficient at learning from explanations. I’m a lot more efficient at picking up patterns.

What’s surprising is that I get Arabic/Muslim/Indian videos. Maybe because a lot of immigrants in Finland are from those countries.
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Re: General language log

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:27 am

sporedandroid wrote:Unfortunately you can only study 30 sentences a day on Clozemaster, unless you get premium. At least Clozemaster makes it faster to make Anki cards. I know Clozemaster isn’t the most reliable, but it does give me good links to wiktionary. I like sentence mining from wiktionary because they give me good example sentences with a nice short explanation.
I've noticed dict.cc have a "vocab trainer", which I think means that if you create a log-in account, it creates flashcards for all the words you look up.

I haven't used this myself, I just look up the words without logging in. I use it for German, but they seem to have bilingual dictionaries for many languages.

----------
I didn't know Clozemaster linked words to Wiktionary, despite using it every day! Thanks for the information :-)
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Feb 24, 2023 1:12 am

Since I’m targeting the “low hanging fruits”, making Anki cards for Finnish is pretty easy. I make an anki card for anything that’s easy for me to grasp. It doesn’t have to be i+1, but I try to aim for that. At this point that’s pretty much impossible for Hebrew. A lot of sentences will be hard to read, but have no unknown words. Occasionally they’ll have two unknown words. Unknown words seem to come in chunks and a lot of times I struggle with sayings more than actual words. Usually I can look them up in the dictionary or Google them.

Right now I’ve given up on logging my time on Polylogger. I’m not sure it would help my motivation at the this point. I usually seem to start new languages with a lot of Anki decks and whittle them down as I progress. Another thing that makes it hard for me to log my time on Anki is that I sometimes don’t finish studying an Anki decks if I’m not in a mood for a language. Usually there will only be ten cards left, so it’s not a big deal.

I still like seeing how much time I spend on YouTube. It felt like I spent two hours watching Finnish lessons, but it was only one hour. Maybe because I was making Anki cards at the same time. It seems like the teachers I find are pretty good at making themselves comprehensible or at least they make me feel like I understand them. YouTube recommended two Finnish videos that weren’t for learners. I could understand a few words here and there, but my comprehension was obviously super low. That’s about the same level of comprehension I have for random native content.

I’m still interested in Hebrew, but I think my brain needs a break from it to feel like I’ve progressed. My listening comprehension is pretty good, but it feels like my brain puts too much effort into it. My reading comprehension is slowly improving, but I’m not all that happy with it either. I’m trying to balance pushing myself to read more complicated things, but also take a break. My new Anki deck is actually fairly manageable. Mainly because it isn’t really about passing or failing. It’s just to remind me to reread things. I find reading gets easier when my heart is fully into it. If it isn’t, I just keep up with reviews and do more Finnish.

Sometimes my brain doesn’t really want Finnish. Probably because I’m learning a lot of new things. In that case I’ll relax or practice listening to Hebrew in a more relaxed way. Maybe I’ll even be fully into Hebrew. It almost seems like it’s drawing from separate energy. I think I can spend more total time studying two languages than only one at a time. I had to stop Icelandic because it seems like languages at a similar level blend together in my brain. Even if they’re not related. It also doesn’t help that Icelandic is a rusty language. That makes studying it super intense. Since my Spanish and Hebrew listening comprehension are sort of similar, they sort of blend together in dreams sometimes. It drives me kind of crazy. I also had a lot of anxiety about English and Spanish blending together when I was a kid. They don’t blend together in my brain anymore because they’re at super different levels now.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Feb 27, 2023 7:19 am

I have a pretty low motivation I’m general. My motivation for Hebrew seems pretty bad. It seems like on my high energy/high motivation days my motivation for Hebrew is higher. When my motivation for Hebrew is super high, my motivation for Finnish goes down.

Finnish doesn’t need as much motivation because I’m at the stage where I make very quick gains. Even when I find an Anki card super hard, a few days later or a week later it won’t be hard anymore. It can be hard, but it a more straightforward way. With the amount of new Anki cards I have to study, I end up spending 30 minutes or even close to an hour on Anki. I like spending a long time on Anki for new languages. I still make sure to keep the reviews manageable.

My issue with Hebrew is that it’s not a “challenge” anymore, but it can be kind of a slog. Reading articles is more manageable now, but it’s still a slog. There’s also a lot videos on YouTube that feel the same. They don’t feel obviously above my level, but it does feel like my brain is flexing. That seems to happen when people speak fast or it’s dense with information. When I watch vlogs or listen to most podcasts, it’s pretty much effortless. I also started watching more YouTube shorts in Hebrew. They’re still not very good, but they’re gradually getting better. I’m seeing less skits and more vlog style content.

I think I’ll just try to consume more content in Hebrew that is easy. It’s a different approach than I’ve been used to. When I was first getting started in Hebrew, listening to stuff way above my level made me progress really quickly. That also seems to work with Finnish. I want to get to the stage where listening and reading feels effortless. I’ll also try to find some reading that feels relatively effortless along with reading that’s challenging. It’s just hard to find smaller goals to work towards in Hebrew, while it’s super easy for Finnish. I know that if I keep studying Finnish I’ll reach this point for Finnish as well.

Right now my main focus in Finnish is to go through my premade Anki decks and watch some learner videos. One of the channels I watch is in spoken Finnish. It’s definitely above my level, but I don’t mind that at this point. What I do is watch the video once without subtitles. Even if my comprehension is low. I’m just happy to be able to recognize known words. Then I watch again with subtitles and analyze the sentences if I feel like it. I’ve also started making Anki cards. The other videos I watch are probably in written Finnish. They are closer to my level. I still don’t understand them 100%, but I seem to do a decent job of following them along. I mainly watch them to learn basic grammar or cultural concepts. I know that studying at least some grammar is a must. I think if I have a good enough feel for grammar it will be easier to understand other dialects.

I already had some basic listening comprehension when I “officially” started learning Finnish. I felt like I needed to get ahead in listening comprehension for Finnish. So far the listening comprehension still seems easier than Icelandic. Finnish also kind of sounds like Icelandic at times, so it might also improve my Icelandic listening comprehension. I know it seems like studying Hebrew improved my French listening comprehension. Obviously it didn’t improve my vocabulary. It just seemed to close the gap I noticed between my reading comprehension and listening comprehension.
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