General language log

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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:02 am

I’m giving learning from music a second chance. Mainly because I’ve been able to experiment a lot with repetitive listening and a lot of words do really stand out to me. Repetitive listening does tend to feel unnatural, but it’s the only way to get listening practice when I’m a beginner at a distant language.

The approach I’m doing right now is listening to a short audio clip without concentrating too hard. This does lower my comprehension quite a bit right now, but I still have a bit of comprehension. When I do understand things it doesn’t feel forced and I’m not really mentally translating. Even though my method relies on translation.

After I listen to it once, I listen again with bilingual subtitles. On this pass through I put some effort into understanding why it’s translated the way it is. I’ve always naturally done this. It’s obviously easier for less distant languages. Sometimes I can do this just by looking at sentences side by side. For Finnish I have to look up a lot of words. To not get overwhelmed I just look up the words that jump out to me the most or I think will help me understand the sentence the most.

I’ll also look up some grammar if it really stands out to me. Since I’m not in a huge rush, I just skip over things that seem too hard. I will vary the intensity depending on my mood. When I repeat this multiple times I find my comprehension goes up on its own and it even transfers over to content that I haven’t studied.

I’m obviously not familiar enough to be able to even study anything without a full English translation. I had the same issue with Modern Hebrew even though I’ve heard people call Modern Hebrew simple. It does tend to have shorter sentences. Especially when it’s spoken. I still couldn’t figure out what a lot of sentences meant. I’ve obviously improved at understanding Hebrew, but I still don’t consciously know made it confusing. I still sort of struggle to read articles, but I can sort of figure things out based on context and maybe hope I can understand it better by re-reading. This has also helped me read Spanish. There’s some grammar constructs in written Spanish that don’t make sense to me and make it hard to read. Even though I haven’t been trying to improve my Spanish, I notice I’m better at dealing with unfamiliar sentence structures.

The one language I didn’t have issues with was Danish. I could read gossip magazines without actually studying Danish. I definitely had to look up words constantly, but I could understand things pretty well after looking words up. There’s no way I could do that for Finnish and I could never do it for Icelandic either.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Jul 25, 2022 3:20 am

Something interesting happens when I look up the lyrics to Finnish songs. I actually do hear the words I think I do. My comprehension is still too low to know for sure if I’m hearing certain words. Which is why I can’t really use dictionaries very well.

A lot of the words I look up have so many meanings. Hebrew had the same issue. But when my level got higher knowing which word it’s referring to became pretty easy most of the time. I still like to use dictionaries, but I only find it helpful when there’s a full English translation available.

I think I’ll start a Finnish anki deck when I can start reading with the help of a dictionary. I can already tell looking up words in Finnish is a lot more complicated. I think I’ll add the dictionary form of a word on the back of the card. I’ll also do the same for Icelandic. I’m glad I don’t have an anki deck for Finnish because that will make me feel like I have to study every day.

Some days I feel like studying it and some days I just don’t. I think that was the mistake I made for Icelandic. I probably shouldn’t have made an anki deck for it. It doesn’t have as many resources as Finnish, so I sort of felt desperate. I was also too dependent on Anki anyways. Mainly due to poor time management. Now I spend most of my time outside of Anki. Even though I’ve reduced how much I use it, it still feels a like a lot when I use it. I think Anki is best when your main focus is vocabulary. Since I don’t understand how Finnish grammar works, vocabulary isn’t really my main focus. My main focus is listening and getting a vague and intuitive understanding of Finnish. I think once I’ve got that, vocabulary study will be a lot easier.

Since my level is low I notice I just don’t remember words all that easily. When I look up words in a song there isn’t a guarantee I’ll process what the word/sentence means. When I’m in the mood I do look up a lot of words, but I don’t expect for them to stick. I only really focus on words that stick out to me. I think a lot of words do stick out to me since I’ve had so much passive exposure.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Jul 27, 2022 5:54 am

I’ve been thinking more about when I should and should use Anki and how to use it in general. One issue I’ve been thinking about is whether I should have one card for one lemma. I feel like I’ve heard people say you should only make one card per lemma and not repeat cards. When I think of it more I don’t actually remember who said it, so maybe I sort of made up that advice. That advice definitely wouldn’t work for Finnish or Icelandic. Part of the challenge with those languages is not knowing the dictionary form of a word. One thing I’ll try is putting the dictionary form on the back of the card. I’ll also make sure the cards are indexed by the sentence. I know I’ll end up having a lot of “duplicates”, but I’ll also end up deleting a lot of cards as well.

Even though I hardly ever come across truly new Hebrew vocabulary. I still struggle to read. One reason is because I need more practice, but another reason is because words have uncommon meanings or because two or three words actually mean something different and they have their own dictionary entry. I end up using my mouse-over dictionary a lot. That got me frustrated, but I’m naturally just doing it less the more I read. Even when I constantly use the mouse-over dictionary. It goes against a lot of advice that just tells me that I should read without a dictionary.

I think dabbling in Finnish has sort of helped me get through this. I can watch some videos with nearly zero comprehension. At first it felt like a waste of time since I pretty much didn’t understand anything. I am starting to notice my comprehension is going up. It is a bit weird looking up what a word means in a video, re-watching the video and not being able to understand it.

One criticism I’ve heard of that method is that you start to rote-memorize things rather than actually learn. I think that happens when you just watch the videos over and over back to back without looking up words and trying to understand why a sentence was structured a certain way. Since I don’t watch a video more than three times in a row this doesn’t really happen to me. It also drives me crazy repeating a video too many times, so I naturally take breaks from specific videos. Since I take these steps, so far it doesn’t seem like my comprehension is much higher on videos I’ve already watched.

It seems like most methods and routines hit a ceiling. I think if I hit a ceiling for my current routine for Finnish and I’m still interested I'll start doing Anki for Finnish. I think doing a lot of Anki for Hebrew isn’t effective anymore. At one point it probably was because I still had a lot of vocabulary to learn and knowing more vocabulary quickly paid off.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Thu Jul 28, 2022 6:37 am

One thing I got backwards in Anki was not adding words that I thought I should have been able to figure out. If you’re not a beginner those are the exact things you should add to an anki deck. When I don’t get something, it means I haven’t been able to acquire it. That means I’d actually benefit from anki. I’ve been noticing progress again in my listening and reading comprehension. I don’t know if it’s mostly because of Anki or reading more. Right now my goal for Hebrew is to spend more time on reading than on Anki. I think I’m doing pretty well. Part of my issue is that I’ve never had to find content in another language.

I did study Icelandic, but I never really reached an intermediate level. So I could still rely on the novelty of the language and being interested in the country itself. I’m relying on that for Finnish. I’m not super interested in Israel as a country. I’m interested in some aspects of Judaism and I’ve also had good interactions with Israelis. I also admire things about their culture. At the same time I don’t get it and I don’t really resonate with it.

When I first started studying Hebrew I sounded very foreign to me compared to the Scandinavian languages. I don’t think that’s very shocking. What did shock me was when I watched a hyperpolyglot video and I understood the Hebrew part better than the Swedish part. It’s not really shocking if you look at the amount of time I’ve studied each language. I’ve never really studied Swedish, but I did study Icelandic and dabble in Danish. So I felt like I should have understood more Swedish. I also didn’t have a consist routine in Hebrew at all and it still sounded very foreign to me. It still does sound foreign to me, but I can understand it.

I definitely notice that I don’t study Finnish every day. Lately it has been more consistent. I often study in clusters and then take a break. I usually take a break when I’m busy or really into Hebrew. I like the self-discipline I’ve learnt from studying Hebrew. It’s super satisfying to know I can stick with it even when I don’t feel like it.

Right now I’m not aiming to study Finnish every day because I know it will make it harder to keep up with Hebrew. That’s what happened with Icelandic. I also want to stretch out the honeymoon phase as long as possible. I think it sort of helps my motivation to have one language in the honeymoon phase, while another one isn’t.

Since I forget Finnish words so quickly, I think it’s possible I could progress more quickly if I use Anki. I don’t mind progressing more slowly as a beginner. I think it’s also a good way to learn vocabulary and grammar more in context. Not from necessarily from context, but in context. I think progressing more slowly as a beginner helps me not suffer as much when I’m intermediate. It did for Hebrew. I think I’ll need Anki when I reach that upper-beginner/lower-intermediate stage. That’s the stage I reached in Icelandic. I think one big reason I quit was because I didn’t know about Anki. In that stage you can understand learner material and you can go through some native media with a dictionary. One big issue is that you lack vocabulary, which is why Anki becomes very helpful. Another issue is a lack of exposure.

I don’t think I would have had the self-discipline anyways. At the same time seeing progress helps me have self-discipline in the first place. I think that’s one reason I’ve been studying Finnish more. I’m starting to see some progress. It’s actually at about the same rate as my progress in Hebrew right now.

I think it’s good that I take breaks from Finnish because it keeps the content I’m working from fresh. When I rewatch and dissect videos, they can get pretty boring and lose effectiveness as well. If I let myself forget the video a bit, I can re-watch it and it feels more like comprehensible input than something I’ve memorized. I do lose a bit of comprehension at first, but once I rewatch it with the bilingual subtitles I get reminded of what I’ve studied. I think this works like natural SRS. It’s also given me more insight into the role of forgetting. I think forgetting makes things feel more like you understand and less like it’s something you’ve memorized.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:12 pm

I think one subtle sign of progress I’m making in Hebrew is that even when I’m very tired it doesn’t seem like my comprehension really gets worse. That’s the most frustrating part about being lower-intermediate for me. With Finnish it seems like I have low comprehension of things like songs or short videos even after I study pretty much every word. I haven’t really been studying Finnish for the last few days.

I guess it’s because I don’t have enough neural pathways associated with Finnish yet. Since I’m still pre-studying Finnish, it doesn’t really get to me. I’m hoping to have more Finnish neural pathways before I study more intensely. One strategy I’ve been using is focusing on one word at a time once in a while. This can be hard in a new language because words change meaning based on context. Having a full translation helps with this issue. Having worked through the text in the past also helps give me a bit of context even though it doesn’t translate into comprehension yet. When I actually can understand things I’m not really mentally translating. I think cramming vocabulary early leads to mental translation. So right now I’m trying to learn high frequency Finnish words in the context of videos for learners. I notice when I see words more in context I tend to not mentally translate. So I’m not too worried when I forget words I learned a bit more out of context in songs. I’m hoping those words will pop up again in learner videos or Moomins. I don’t exactly know what level Moomins is.

Since my reading level in Hebrew isn’t great, I do an interesting form of mental translation. Instead of translating some more literary words into English, I sometimes mentally translate them into simpler Hebrew words. This usually happens most with grammar words and I’m sure it will fade away once I see more things in context. When I see what it’s like to translate it into English, it sounds pretty grating to me.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:35 am

I think one issue I had with Anki was having stale cards and studying cards I don’t feel ready for. I don’t know exactly what makes me feel ready for cards. It’s just sort of a feeling. I think having a big backlog of unseen Anki cards helps with this. I usually just suspend any card I don’t feel like studying. Once I run out of cards to study I unsuspend those cards and by then I might be ready for them. One issue I have with some of the cards is that they’re all from the same study session. I think I usually do better with a bit more of a gap.

Finnish seems to work the same way. I’m not really ready for most words and most of the words that end up sticking end up being high frequency. I think words only really stick after I get a lot of repetition and when it pops up in sentences I have some hope of understanding. That excludes a lot of song lyrics. I’m definitely noticing that I’m just spontaneously understanding more words in songs.

Like I was saying before I found a very helpful channel for learners. It’s called “Sinä Osaat! Suomen kieltä kaikille”. I’m pretty sure it’s spoken in written Finnish, while Finnished is in spoken Finnish. It makes it easier for me to listen to and study afterwards. I also appreciate that there’s more visuals. Even when my comprehension is low, I get to enjoy looking at Finland. That makes it easier for me to listen longer. Now I can sort of understand how Japanese learners can watch a bunch of anime without understanding much.

Reading Hebrew is still hard, but it’s becoming more manageable. It used to be hard to make it ten minutes, but now it seems like it’s normal to be able to read for 25 and even 40 minutes. I can sometimes find things I genuinely enjoy, but most of the time I don’t really enjoy myself. Right now I’m just reading a bunch of Wikipedia articles on topics I’m interested in. While they’re not always written in the most enjoyable way, they do have links to articles that might be more interesting. I also like the level on difficulty. When I read celebrity gossip or clickbatey articles I find that they’re too easy to feel like I’m learning much and too hard to be mindless guilty pleasures.

What I notice is that I’ll either binge watch Finnish learner videos or just binge watch TV shows in Hebrew. It’s sort of either or. As much as I enjoy Finnish videos, there’s only so much I can take because they’re so repetitive. I definitely need that as a beginner. My brain wants to be able to make some din from Finnish, but it can’t quite do it yet. So sometimes when I’m falling asleep or wake up in the middle of the night I’ll hear a bunch of Finnish sounding gibberish in my head. When it does this with Hebrew I can actually understand it. One time my brain even made up a whole chapter in a book. I’m not surprised it can do that, since that’s also happened to me in English.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:48 pm

It seems like I’m mentally translating more in Finnish. This happens when I don’t quite know a word, but I’ve memorized and looked it up a lot. So it sort of just happens. I think if I see those words and phrases in more contexts I’ll naturally stop mentally translating. This is obviously challenging as a beginner, but I’m confident I can at least do this with higher frequency words.

I still think the grammar makes words hard to look up. Since wiktionary mentions a lot of grammatical terminology, I do end up looking some of it up when I’m in the mood. I’ve mentioned it before, but I have found a website that is decent enough for me. While a lot of it goes over my head. I know Finnish grammar will take a while to learn and there’s a lot that I don’t know that I don’t know.

At the same time I find it pretty easy to visualize, even if there’s concepts that are totally new to me. Especially when I use example sentences translated into English. It’s the same way I deal with grammatical gender in other languages. I remember when I briefly studied Icelandic again I noticed that I made the most mistakes with the neuter gender. I think it’s because the masculine and feminine gender is just easier to visualize.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sun Aug 14, 2022 7:30 am

I think I possibly dealt with the main issue I have with reading. Books take too long for me to finish . So I simply picked shorter books. Now I pretty much have no issues reading. There’s no need to ban myself from using my phone. That would just make me end up hate reading. In the long run I want to read because I enjoy it, not because I’m forcing myself.

For now I’m picking short English books because they’re convenient and easier. I find a lot of skills in reading transfer over pretty well to other languages. Dealing with unfamiliar grammar structures with context in Hebrew has made me better at doing that in Spanish. Listening to things in Finnish and trusting I’ll understand a word later has helped me watch TV shows in Hebrew better.

I’m also picking English books because I’m thinking about what things will be like when Hebrew isn’t a main focus. I know I’ll read interesting English books, but I can imagine myself reading interesting books in other languages as well. I think this will also expand the types of books I can read. I definitely notice this with my music taste. Finnish male singers kind of sound like Elmer Fudd to me, but French and Danish male singers tend to be pretty good. I think this would be even more pronounced with books. I kind of can’t stand a lot of popular American non-Fiction, but Israeli non-fiction seems pretty good to me. American non-fiction just goes off-topic too much for me.

Like I said earlier I’m reading articles in Hebrew to improve my reading comprehension in Hebrew. The amount of time I can focus on reading Hebrew articles varies. A lot of times the reading level actually seems harder than a lot of books, but since I finish them more quickly I’m more motivated. I think reading articles at this level has been pretty effective at helping me progress. I even notice improvements in my listening comprehension.

Despite not focusing on Icelandic, it does seem to have a special place in my heart. Unfortunately I still get intrusive thoughts and discomfort when I expose myself to Icelandic. Even though Finnish is its own thing, I think it satisfies my craving for Northern Europe. I think Finnish being in a different family helps me find Finnish more satisfying. I know forcing myself to study Norwegian wouldn’t work too well. I’d want “the real thing”, since Finnish is its own thing that hasn’t been an issue so far. Even though I’m more into Finnish right now, it is a lot more exciting for me to find an Icelandic book than find a Finnish book. So maybe deep down I don’t find Finnish as interesting.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:49 am

I think Finnish has done a good job of freeing up some pressure from Hebrew. I’ve sort of been annoyed at Israeli because it’s not Northern European. I craved Northern European cultures, but at the same time I didn’t have the motivation and all that much interest. So Hebrew was a good fresh start. I think it did a good job of that. Now that I can enjoy Finnish, I can also appreciate what is actually unique to Hebrew.

I’ve been having a lot of brain fog lately. So I’ve had to cut down on Anki. At the same time I’m noticing that brain fog isn’t really negatively impacting my comprehension anymore. Sometimes I notice I can’t focus on details in a news story, but I notice the same issues with English. One thing that fluctuates a lot more is my reading comprehension since my reading is kind of weak. I also notice reading in English can get harder on some days. This sort of stability is one the things I want to accomplish before I switch to another main language.

I think Finnish is also not too sensitive to brain fog. Since I’m a beginner I constantly forget vocabulary. Even when I have no brain fog at all. I find the upper-beginner and lower-intermediate stage is the worst for brain fog. That’s the stage where I’m the most likely to see fluctuations in comprehension. I’m glad none of the languages I’m studying are at that level. I guess Icelandic is pretty close to that level, which is one reason I’m avoiding it. I think that’s the stage where you’re able to learn the most vocabulary and Anki is the most beneficial. I constantly come across unknown Finnish words, but my level is too low for them to stick easily. I don’t come across all that many unknown Hebrew words, but it’s pretty easy for me to remember them.

One thing I’m doing to improve my ability to memorize Finnish words is look up the etymology and the way the word can change and interact with the language. This is pretty easy to do this in wiktionary, but it can get pretty time consuming. I often just wander around different dictionary definitions. A lot of times I’ll get some example sentences. I find them very helpful and interesting. This sort of reminds me of what I did with subs2srs. I didn’t just do Anki reps. I looked up words and a bit of the grammar in the dictionary and just analyzed why it was translated a certain way. This made non-literal translations even more helpful.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Aug 22, 2022 1:50 pm

It seems like I have been making progress in Hebrew. I still have to force myself to read, but reading seems a lot easier now. So I can get more reading done and expand my vocabulary. I still don’t seem to notice all that much unknown vocabulary. I think that’s good for phasing out Anki. I’ve been thinking about when I’ll be satisfied enough with Hebrew to switch to a different main language. I’m still not satisfied with my reading comprehension. I feel like it would be easy to neglect if it wasn’t a priority. I don’t really need active skills. When I Google things in Hebrew I notice I’m more likely to struggle in spelling than grammar. I have a hard time thinking in Hebrew, but when I do manage to think in Hebrew I do seem to have good grammar. I think I’ll just start googling things I can think about in Hebrew.

So far it seems like I’ll switch to Finnish. It’s still not a final decision, but there’s a few reasons why that might be my next main language. One big reason is because I’ve found it easy to motivate myself to study it so far. That wasn’t exactly the case with French or German even though I’ve thought of several reasons why I should like those languages. They have good films and documentaries! One reason I was skeptical about Finnish was because I was into Finnish music and not much else. I thought enjoying music was a shallow reason. Turns out I also enjoy studying the language and learning about the culture. Another reason is that if I do switch to Finnish it would be a pretty smooth transition. I’ve already been phasing Finnish in and sort of phasing Hebrew out.

Phasing Finnish in means watching Finnish learner videos and making more of an effort to understand them. I also look up song lyrics. I think Anki would speed things up, but it’s too much commitment. There’s still plenty of days where I just don’t feel like studying Finnish. Phasing out Hebrew means reducing the amount of Anki I do. It also means integrating it more with the rest of my life. I don’t even know how often I’ll use it. I want to be able to just not use it for a while and have the same passive skills when I return to it.

One concern I have about learning Finnish is lacking good media beyond music. I also heard it’s heavily geoblocked. I’m still doing research on that. The lack of media seems to be a common complaint. The gap between spoken and written language also seems to be a common issue. Right now I’m dealing with that issue is watching some learner videos that are in spoken Finnish. I look up words in the dictionary, even when I don’t “need” to. That way I can sort of see how the dictionary/written form of the word differs from spoken form of the word. I’m hoping I can get some intuition for this.
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