General language log

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sporedandroid
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri May 21, 2021 7:31 am

I’m still noticing that I’m starting to romanticize Icelandic and other European languages. One reason is that I just can’t understand Israeli humor. I kind of feel this sort of wall between me and a lot of content in general. I just don’t feel like I can really connect with it. One reason I can’t understand it might just have to do with my level being too low. It’s not like I don’t understand anything, but I think the extra effort and lack of nuance kind of ruins things.

There’s also the whole cultural issue. I just don’t get Israeli culture. There’s quite a few concepts that just don’t exist. I can kind of pick up on what they are, but I can tell I don’t really get it. Even though they talk faster I find it easier to watch shows aimed at teens. While I notice a bit of the cultural differences, I just find the plot a lot easier to follow and get into.

I don’t even know how much I want to learn about the culture or the country of Israel. I think I’ll pick some things up by exposure. Maybe I’ll gradually get more of an interest. It just feels weird to watch some things in Hebrew. I can understand it, but it feels foreign to me. With the Nordic shows it’s the other way around. It doesn’t feel foreign, but I can’t really understand it. It’s still surreal to me that my Hebrew is at a higher level. Maybe I’m just getting intermediate blues...

I just find it interesting how I’m romanticizing Icelandic right now. I did quit studying because of the lack of resources and the lack of perceived progress. Right now my solution to lack of perceived progress is a study routine I can stick to. That way I mostly measure my progress by how well I can stick to my routine rather results. I need to sort of balance that by having goals. As I’m hitting around two years I’m noticing how vague my goals are.

While I’m still making obvious progress, my goals are just vague. For me learning Hebrew was motivated by a strong, but very vague interest in Judaism/religion and just noticing that seem to get along with Jewish people. It’s a very woo woo sort of interest I have. I don’t even understand it much or even understand Judaism too well to be honest. There’s many things about Judaism I find fascinating, but a lot of things are still boring for me. I guess vague motivations cause vague goals.

One thing I’m really thinking about is how I’ll be able to maintain Hebrew in the future when I’m busy with other languages and life in general. One thing that is for sure is that I need to improve my reading level. I’m working on that, so I’m not all that worried. I’m more worried about enjoyment. What things about Hebrew will keep me coming back enough to maintain it. Maybe I shouldn’t think of it so much.

I think one tool for maintenance could be just listening to music. I find when I listen to Icelandic songs I used to listen to, it seems to bring me back to the level I used to be. At least for that song. Especially if it’s some song lyrics I spent time with. When I listen to other songs or people actually speaking I don’t notice that effect anymore.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sun May 23, 2021 6:56 am

One thing I’m happy I haven’t really experienced so far is the intermediate plateau. Maybe because the intermediate plateau is based more on speaking than comprehension. So far I have had a fairly steady increase in my comprehension. Not all that many spikes, but no real plateaus either. I have sort of noticed that progress slows down as I advance, but my ability to do more makes up for it.

I think one thing that helps is noticing if I’m stagnating before I get into a real plateau. One way I recently noticed I was stagnating that I was having trouble finding cards to add to my anki deck despite not being at a C1 or C2 level. Watching tv shows is a good way to improve my listening comprehension, but it quickly became an inefficient way of improving my vocabulary.

It may seem obvious, but when I was at a lower level I didn’t have to think of where to find vocabulary. There was unknown words everywhere. They used to constantly scream for my attention. Now I can ignore them and still understand a lot of things.

Right now my goal is to add 50 words a week to Anki. In the past I could easily find 50 unknown words in a video. It lined up with roughly 70-80% comprehension. Now for a lot of tv show episodes, I might only get 1 or 2 new words that I even bother looking up. If it’s harder maybe it will be in the 5-10 range.

Right now the most efficient way for me to get new vocabulary is to do some intensive reading of my book. Before I had an efficient way of finding new words I had to go looking for new words. That would also result in having a lot of very hard example sentences. I’d say my average comprehension for the books I’m reading may be around 95%. When it quotes from the Bible or other sources my comprehension drops quite a bit. Thankfully the author explains those quotes in simplified language most of the time. I think for now 95% comprehension is acceptable.

I think in the past 70-80% was acceptable comprehension. One reason was that I couldn’t find anything at 95 or 98%. Another reason is that at that point 70-80% comprehension was more in line with my goals. Increasing my vocabulary was the main way to increase my comprehension. Now that isn’t 100% the case. Right now I’m noticing more of a gap between the amount of words I know and how good my reading or listening skills actually end up being.

To put it simply I think reading something at 70-80% comprehension would have been a lot easier in early 2020 compared to right now. A lot of times the only thing getting in the way of comprehension was the lack of vocabulary. There would be a lot of clean i+1 sentences. Now it’s way less simple. If I’m at 70-80% comprehension it’s either a topic I don’t know (and probably don’t care about) or a really hard writing style. I also get a lot of sentences where I think there’s an unknown words, but if I give myself an extra second or two I can figure it out without looking anything up. I think that issue is better helped by more exposure than memorizing more words.

I think 50 words a week is the best amount right now. I did 70 words a week, but that became too much. I find a break from studying new cards on the weekends helps keep reviews manageable. It also allows me to consolidate. If I see a mature card that doesn’t feel familiar enough I often fail it on purpose. That can help make the word feel more familiar. That often makes it easier to consume content. I think I end up concentrating harder and mentally translating more if I’m listening to or reading something with a lot of words I’m barely familiar with. Those cards often won’t add too much time to my study time. They’re quicker and easier than the less mature cards.

One thing I notice is that if my anki sessions are too long or hard, I end up having a harder time actually consuming content. Right now I might actually make more progress by studying less on anki.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue May 25, 2021 12:06 am

Semi-recently I looked at the list of top podcasts in Iceland. They didn’t look so great for language learning. One common format I see is the late night/morning show/the so and so show format. It’s not a format I care for in English and that format is even worse for learning languages.

One problem I have with those shows is that they change what they’re talking about very often. This makes it pretty much impossible to comprehend when I’m first getting into podcasts and mainly relying on the title and description to know what they’re talking about. In English I find this annoying because oftentimes I’m only interested in the thing they mentioned in their clickbait title. I’m not interested in the ten other things they’re talking about. All of that just gives me major whiplash.

Another problem is that I don’t get the references and inside jokes. I don’t even get those jokes in English, so it’s even worse in another language. Since this format seems to common in all languages, this was one of the first formats I listened to in Hebrew. I think that held me back from listening to podcasts for a while.

Another popular category is comedy. So far I don’t do so well with comedy in Hebrew. I have heard before that Israel just isn’t good at comedy even though a lot of people like “Jewish Humor.” I still don’t know if this is due to my level being too low or it’s just not funny to me. At this point I don’t know if I’ll be able to get humor in another language. I did find this standup comedian named Ari Eldjárn who was very funny. Since it was in English I assume it’s aimed at English speakers. If that’s what Icelandic humor is usually like maybe I have some hope.

True Crime seems to be a pretty popular category. I’ve never been all that much into true crime and I don’t find it very good for language learning either. It’s full of random vocabulary and it follows a narrative. I find it pretty challenging to follow a storyline in another language. I just looked back and I did see some more promising podcasts. I saw a few that were health & fitness and business. That seems to be along the lines of the self-help podcasts I found incredibly helpful at a lower intermediate level. I also saw some news podcasts which are a bit better at a regular intermediate level.

If I were to return to studying Icelandic, I think I’ll see if it’s possible to have affinity for a language or not. While I’m motivated to study Hebrew it doesn’t seem like I have all that much affinity for it. I sort of feel like I have more affinity towards French or German culture, but I’m not actually all that motivated to study French or German. Maybe feeling like I lack affinity sort of has to do with being at an intermediate level and not actually spending any time in Israel or even interacting much with Israelis.

Most of my interactions with Israelis have been when I was traveling. They’ve been pretty positive so far. They were fun to be with and things went pretty smoothly. To me it feels like it has more to do with them being good with people than me actually fitting in with them. I’ve always sort of found them charismatic. This might also have to do with the context. I find it way more fun to be with people when I’m traveling in general.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:57 pm

I’m definitely noticing improvements in my reading level. Having monolingual dictionary definitions on my anki cards has payed off. I am noticing that a lot of the language used in dictionary definitions is also used in the books I’m reading. It’s definitely helped me get used to more complicated sentence structures. I think for a while I needed a very intensive approach because a lot of times I wouldn’t know how words are pronounced. When I’m on anki it’s more convenient to look up how words are pronounced on youglish.

Doing that started to get tedious, so I naturally did it less and less. I’ve found a lot of times I can’t force tolerance for ambiguity. I find the more patterns or vocabulary I know the more my tolerance for ambiguity goes up. I think another thing that helped me improve my reading comprehension was seeing a lot of words that were technically not known words, but I still knew the meaning of them. It didn’t matter as much if I knew how they were pronounced.

When I first started learning Hebrew I couldn’t even imagine being able to listen to podcasts and not understand every word. I pictured myself maybe listening to podcasts and intensively studying the transcript afterwards. Turns out there’s pretty much no podcasts with transcripts for Hebrew and that’s okay. It turns out there’s a huge difference between 60-80% comprehension and 85%+. I think for Icelandic I might have been at about 60-80% comprehension, so I had pretty much no tolerance for ambiguity.

It drives me crazy when people tell people to “learn from context” and quit looking up words without elaborating on it. That advice is particularly frustrating at a beginner or lower intermediate level. The one thing they don’t really mention is that the higher your level is the easier it is to learn from context. Another thing they don’t mention is what media is more likely to have context. Basically when people talk about things you can see that provides context. It doesn’t even have to do with the intended age all that much.

Some examples would be cooking shows, unboxing videos, product reviews and possibly sports. It’s a lot easier to pick videos you’re interested in than if you limit yourself to videos for children or learners. You really aren’t guaranteed to get context from shows like Arthur or Sesame Street. A lot of times those videos end up being harder than a lot of things aimed at adults and end up discouraging people.

Right now an issue I’m running into is actually making time to read. I used to love reading when I was a kid, but as I got older I found it harder and harder to keep up the habit. Part of the reason is because I have a hard time finding books I’m interested in. I’ve found a few English and Hebrew books I’m interested in reading. For the Hebrew books I think I’ll use some of the time I set aside for anki to do some intensive reading. Particularly if my reviews are kind of high, but I don’t have enough new/unseen cards.

For now my approach to reading Hebrew is highlighting words I’m unsure about and only looking up words if they’re repeated or seem important. I find with non-fiction it’s way easier to know which words are important. If I see an unknown word on a heading I definitely know it will be important. When I’m doing intensive reading I’ll look up the words I highlighted. Sometimes I realize I do know the word after I re-read it. I also find non-fiction easier to reread than fiction. One of my goals before I move on to another language is being able to read articles I find online without being intimidated. I’m still not quite there yet. I actually find books easier to read than a lot of articles, so I’ll keep improving my reading comprehension by reading more books.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:00 am

One thing that’s been taking a long time to develop is a long-term and stable representation of what Hebrew sounds like. It’s gradually getting better, but it’s still fairly challenging. It mostly bothers me when I’m reading. As I’m improving at reading, I’m starting to just subvocalize less.

As for the reading material itself, I’m getting more an idea of how to tackle Biblical Hebrew. Right now I’m sort of dealing with it the same way I deal with other literature. One thing that helps make it easier to follow is skimming through an English Wikipedia entry. My book app makes it easy to google things, but it doesn’t really have the best dictionary.

Even the English Wikipedia entry can be challenging to follow, but I find it makes it easier to follow later on. I do the same with certain aspects of Israeli culture. I think it’s pretty time efficient to skim through English articles, but I probably wouldn’t read a whole book in English about something.

One thing that is challenging to tell apart is not being familiar enough with something and just not finding it interesting. I think skimming through English articles sort of solves the issue. I find some aspects of studying the Bible interesting and some less than pleasant. Even though I have a fair amount of intrinsic motivation to study these topics, I find I still need people to make it more exciting and accessible for me.

This is also the same issue I have with Israeli media or humor. I don’t know if it’s a simply not for me or if I need more context. I think part of it is overall level. I recently watched one clip of standup and actually found one joke funny. I think I need some level of fluency to really get into the flow. I sort of got the other jokes, but I simply didn’t find them funny. They were kind of sexist, so I just didn’t find them clever. I think standup the pace of standup is definitely getting more and more comfortable for me, but I just don’t get the jokes.

I think I’m also just picky with humor and a lot of media in general. There’s a lot of jokes in English that I don’t get or don’t find funny. Especially groups of friends bantering on a podcast or current event show. Basically any humor that’s too reliant on personality, groups of people or personality traits. Don’t care. Since I don’t like these shows in English it makes sense I won’t like it in Hebrew. I can sometimes prefer another cultures version of something, but generally things are kind of in line with my taste for things in English.

As I might of mentioned before, I’m starting to tone down anki. I love the simple structure and satisfaction it gives me, but it’s been causing issues.

1. The reviews have just been piling up. Maybe because my cards are too “hard”, but maybe because that’s just what anki does. I’ve been culling cards with long intervals and cards that just aren’t working.

2. It’s also getting harder to make cards to begin with. I’m encountering less unknown words and I’m just getting better at ignoring unknown words. I also often look up words that turn out to be words I should know. Sometimes that happens even more than truly unknown words.

3. It’s starting to look I’ll benefit more from reading than trying to grow my vocabulary. I have so many memorized words that I don’t actually know very well. Since I’m getting out of the reading pain range for a lot of books I actually want to read this is becoming more feasible. I also have an issue with processing more complicated sentences. I guess my anki issues are showing that my time is better used reading.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Jun 09, 2021 7:38 am

I think I’ve been doing a decent job of making my reading level catch up to my general language level. Listening to audio still feels more comfortable, but it seems like a lot of the things I can listen to I can also read. One big issue I have is just reading speed. I find books more comfortable to read than newspaper articles. I can listen to newspaper articles fairly comfortably with a few comprehension gaps here and there, but I can’t comfortably read them yet. I think I’m starting to notice some overall improvements by reading more.

I’m still in the progress of getting into the habit of reading since I realized that this particular wave of anki has done most of its job. I’m keeping up with reviews, but I’m just not adding as many new cards. It’s been fairly challenging to get my Hebrew reading level to catch up to my listening comprehension. It has to do with it being an audio dominant language for me and the alphabet itself. To me it was crazy when I heard about Japanese learners having a better reading comprehension than a listening comprehension.

One thing that may sound weird to people is that I have a batter listening comprehension in Spanish compared to reading comprehension. It makes sense because Spanish is my heritage language. Even though Spanish is phonetic I’ve always found Spanish slow and uncomfortable to read compared to English. I almost feel like studying Hebrew improved my reading comprehension in Spanish.

One language that is reading dominant for me is Icelandic. I just don’t have a realistic idea of what it sounds in my head. I’d also had a lot of moments when I don’t understand a thing people say. When I got actual subtitles to movies I realized I knew maybe 60% of the vocabulary. Not a great percentage, but it’s not 0% either. It does seem like one of the hardest languages for listening comprehension. It seems like sometimes I’d even have a higher listening comprehension for Finnish and German even though I’ve only really dabbled in those languages.

In late 2020 I tried to improve my listening comprehension for Icelandic, but it just led to too many intrusive thoughts. I think I did make decent progress for the amount of time. I still enjoyed it though. It’s still hard to know if I enjoyed it out of nostalgia or if it’s actually a language I want to learn. I already know how impractical it is.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Thu Jun 24, 2021 6:59 am

I think I figured out a good approach to read non-fiction books. Right now I’m reading two books at a time. One I’m reading more extensively and one I’m reading more intensely. For the extensive book I read and highlight words I don’t know, sections I have trouble understanding and things I find interesting. The app I use has multiple colors for highlighting, so I use the default yellow highlight for unknown words. I only look up words if the words are repeated or seem very important.

When I do intensive reading I’m re-reading things I’ve extensively read before. Using the dictionary can often be used as a crutch, so I try to do more and more reading without dictionary use. I think one way my reading has improved is that it’s less tiring than it was before. It’s still fairly slow and tiring, so I often can’t get much reading done. It’s particularly tiring when I do intensive reading and make anki cards from unknown words I come across. Since I don’t read all that fast, I don’t actually end up making all that many cards. Maybe 10 from a one hour session.

I think that also happens because I’m reading non-fiction rather than fiction. I come across a lot more unknown words when I read fiction. I think when I read the book I got on personality disorders in Israeli literature I’ll be able to be exposed to that vocabulary without committing to a whole book. I don’t enjoy fiction as much because of the higher amount of unknown vocabulary and the fact that it’s harder to follow the story if I keep re-reading it.

There is one non-fiction book I just cannot read. It’s about elitism. It seemed interesting when it was being promoted on a podcast I was listening to. My general guideline for getting a book is being able to read the description and first chapter without dictionary use. With this book I couldn’t even read the description with heavy dictionary use. Maybe I’ll find it interesting to read when I’m at a higher level or maybe I’ll find it tedious. Who knows?

There was one author where I also had a hard time reading his books. Both an English on an English translation of his book and a Hebrew review said his books were heavy and tedious to read. I thought it was due to my level, but I guess native speakers don’t enjoy his books. I actually find his books easier to read than that book on elitism, so maybe that book is a very heavy academic book.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sun Jul 04, 2021 7:43 am

For the last few months or so I’ve been struggling with the idea of transitioning from studying a language to using it. In my case using it doesn’t really involve speaking, but I think consuming input also counts as using a language. For the past two years or so I’ve been happily studying Hebrew. I don’t even enjoy extremely structured studying. At least not so far. I’ve been able to get away with mainly studying vocabulary and sentence mining.

At least until recently. My comprehension is okay. If I have a good amount of energy and I’m watching a YouTube video it almost feels like English or at least Spanish. I’m noticing more and more content where I know enough vocabulary, but I still find it hard. Harder than English for sure. I’m also noticing the cultural distance when I try to get into certain media. I came into learning Hebrew already feeling that cultural distance. Especially compared to the Scandinavian languages did for me.

At the same time I know I’ll run into the same issues with the Scandinavian languages. One advantage Hebrew has is that I only really have one language to pick from. I wanted to learn a Jewish language. I had no experience with classical languages, so I didn’t start with Biblical Hebrew. I didn’t feel like learning a minority language, so that eliminated Yiddish and Ladino. That just left Modern Hebrew.

I still feel motivated to study Hebrew, but it feels like my days of “studying” are sort of coming to an end. At least the way I’m studying right now. I’ve already integrated watching YouTube videos into my main study sessions. I also listen to podcasts a lot while I’m commuting or going for walks. It’s pretty challenging to integrate Hebrew into my life. I can’t just replace English with Hebrew since Hebrew isn’t a very big language.

I’m just starting to worry what will happen to Hebrew when something else becomes my main focus. I just started to learn programming. I’ve been wanting to learn it for a while, but I’ve never found the space and time. Now that Hebrew is less intense I have a lot of extra energy to take up something new. I’m very much a beginner and I’m finding it pretty challenging. One thing Hebrew has taught me is that the beginner stage is temporary. So I have a lot more strength to push through it.
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Re: General language log

Postby lysi » Sun Jul 04, 2021 10:08 am

sporedandroid wrote:In my case using it doesn’t really involve speaking, but I think consuming input also counts as using a language.


It does count as using a language, since any time that you're employing the language parts of your mind, whether for comprehension or production, you're using it.

I would say that you shouldn't view language studying/using as a dichotomy. They're both aspects of language proficiency. They will both always be useful, just in different proportions. Even native speakers search up grammar aspects sometimes, just the other day I was looking up if you're supposed to use "an" or "a" with acronyms that start with a consonant but that you pronounce like a vowel (like S, that you pronounce as "es").
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Sep 03, 2021 4:35 am

I’m kind of getting the hang of restructuring my study routine. When I was lower intermediate the main thing I had to do was memorize vocabulary and find the easiest possible input. I could progress just by doing that. I would intensely study harder material to increase my vocabulary and listen to podcasts to build up my fluency.

That kind of stopped working because I’m finding a lot more material that is above my level where I actually know a high percentage of the vocabulary. Right now I’m comfortable with a lot of podcasts and easier easier YouTube videos. Those YouTube videos are kind of fun, but pretty shallow. I can probably only watch one hour of it a day.

The podcasts used to be pretty good practice, but I know I can’t progress just by listening to podcasts like I used to. I’m starting to find podcasts more enjoyable. I think because it’s so easy to gloss over things that are above your level. So I end up missing details and nuance that make things more enjoyable.

One thing that’s improving my ability to notice details a lot is reading. I still find it challenging to get enough reading in, but I’m gradually improving. I honestly find pretty much any reading pretty tiring. At least my reading level is fluent enough for me to incorporate it into my regular study sessions without taking away all my focus. I can finally make it through at least one chapter in a book or one article in one sitting.

Even though I’m making progress in Hebrew, it still feels like study a lot of the time. Both the hard work and not quite getting the nuance makes it feel like study. It’s hard for me to do anything in Hebrew for fun besides music. I still really want to study Icelandic one day, but I have to wait until Hebrew doesn’t feel like study anymore.
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