General language log

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sporedandroid
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sun Jan 02, 2022 6:38 am

luke wrote:
sporedandroid wrote:I’ve been thinking about my goal for 2022. I think I’ll mainly focus on finding purpose.

2021 was mainly focused on reading. I did improve a lot at reading, but somehow that wasn’t as satisfying as 2020. In 2019 and 2020 memorizing vocabulary was a huge goal.

I think one thing that might help is GLOSS.

Thanks for sharing your reflections.

If you come across a browser that you like for GLOSS, please mention it.

I think Chrome and Firefox kind of work okay if you ignore the videos. Still can’t get the videos to work.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Jan 14, 2022 7:42 am

I just had a bit of covid. It’s pretty similar to a regular flu and like you can imagine I didn’t have too much motivation to study Hebrew. Since I didn’t want to give up language learning too much, I decided to dabble more in Finnish. I changed things up a bit and tried the Finnish Duolingo course.

It was actually pretty fun and easy. It gave me a nice false sense of accomplishment which was just what I needed. Some days I think I spent around two hours. I got past the second checkpoint, but I only got 60% on the quiz. I still don’t like the heart system on Duolingo, but I found a workaround. One workaround is practicing on Duolingo to get more lives. I guess it is good to review a lot as a beginner.

I also got a three day free trial of the premium version. I guess it improved. Now that my free trial is over I’m going to break my streak on purpose. Duolingo got me streak freezes on purpose, so my streak wouldn’t be broken. So I have an eight day streak. I think I have one more. I don’t want to get addicted to keeping up the streak. I don’t know how much more I’ll study Finnish. It won’t be a daily thing, but I think I’ll study it when I feel like studying another language.

I tried the Yiddish course and I didn’t like it too much so far. They focused a lot on reading and I did pretty bad. Sometimes I think I have a slight case of dyslexia that isn’t bad enough to be diagnosed. It does run in my family. I didn’t learn to read English with the ABCs. I just memorized what words looked like and worked out the details later on.

I think I took a bit longer than some people to read fluently, but since I started reading younger it kind of averaged out. I think I still occasionally flip letters around, but I sort of correct it when things don’t make sense. This makes me not enjoy avoid reading anything out loud. I also don’t seem to have the same stamina for reading, but at the same time I can read faster than average.

I don’t necessarily notice it in English, but I definitely notice it when I’m trying to read other languages. Especially if the alphabet is different. I can’t learn an alphabet in a few hours like all the other polyglots. Even though I technically know the Hebrew alphabet now, I still feel pretty dyslexic when I read and write it. I know a lot of it can be improved by reading more, but maybe being fluent in English masks it.

I think if I were to study Yiddish it would be a better use of time to teach me vocabulary and sentence structure rather than tricking me with a bunch of similar looking words to test my reading ability.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Feb 09, 2022 7:23 am

I think for this year my goal will be to find ways to use Hebrew more and spend less time on anki. I overuse Anki a bit because I’m often under confident in how well I know a word, it gives me structure and it helps give me a feeling of accomplishment and progress. I’m not naturally organized, so I’m not good at organizing study sessions.

I guess this whole anki stuff has been hit or miss. I don’t think I’ve necessarily used Anki less. It’s just not the center of my study sessions as much as it used to be. I think this was helpful when I was more new to language learning. It helped me feel like I could be done with studying. Now it’s not so helpful since a huge of mine is just getting exposed to more hours in Hebrew. When I feel like I’m “done”, doing anything in Hebrew after I’m done with anki feels weird. Now it doesn’t feel so weird anymore. Now it isn’t too unusual to have days where I spend four or five hours studying. Most of the studying just ends up being listening.

The advice to use your target language is common advice. I’ve never cared for that advice since it’s always been very vague and seemed like it was just code for talking with people. I guess this year I’ll figure out what exactly that means for me.

One thing I did was start an online course IN Hebrew. I like online courses because I’m forced to really make sure I understand the content. Lately I’ve been getting into the habit of just listening to things and not really caring if I understand. Probably because I’m “good enough” now. That makes it harder to actually progress. I’m also forced to do some reading. Thankfully the reading is nicely formatted, so it’s easier to read. Since Hebrew is right to left and a lot of websites are the best designed in the first place a lot of Hebrew text is just hard for me to read.

I’ve also started a bit of writing. Mainly if there’s some exercises on podcasts I listen to I’ll transcribe or paraphrase the questions. I also kind of tried to answer the questions. I have a lot of excuses not to write more in Hebrew. One excuse is that it’s hard to write on my computer even though I mostly use my phone. Another excuse is that most sites or apps just don’t do a good job at formatting. It was pretty satisfying to write in Hebrew, but I can’t say it’s a habit yet.

I’m gradually improving at reading, but I’m not doing so great at reading books or even articles. I find books challenging because they seem long and articles just seem to hard for me to finish in one sitting. One way I’ve gotten a bit more reading done is by looking for more podcasts to listen to. It’s a bit of a catch 22, but the higher my reading level is the easier it will probably be to get into a habit of reading.

Same sort of thing happened with listening. I still find it hard to enjoy TV shows. Especially more “clever” shows since they’re quick paced tell a lot of off-topic jokes I just don’t get. Right now I’m going more for quantity than challenging myself. Right now I’m trying to find more documentaries and maybe reality shows I’ll enjoy. Since documentaries are pretty close to my level, it isn’t hard to make myself watch them. I just have to find them.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:35 am

One thing I’ve been noticing is that my studying is more inconsistent, but at the same time I’m getting more study time. It just seems easier to do more language learning after I’ve spent more time doing other stuff. Before two hours would kind of be the most I could do, but now it seems to be five hours.

I think it’s kind of good I’m becoming more well-rounded. I want to have a more balanced life and be more relatable. I think being singleminded kind of helped me at first because I’m just not naturally disciplined. I didn’t even study all that much at first. I think I started with 30-45 minutes a day. Right now it doesn’t really help.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:54 am

One thing I’ve been struggling with is getting into reading. I think for now I’ve found one reading activity I like. Online courses. I like them because they’re designed to be short and easy to read and they don’t feel too dumbed down. They also often have comprehension questions, so I’m forced to actively try to understand. A lot of times when I watch the news I don’t necessarily pay full attention to all the details.

Right now a huge issue I have with reading is my reading speed. It’s not actually too bad while reading middle grade novels, but it is a bit hard for me to find middle grade novels that are interesting for me. For me it’s hard to read novels aimed at adults because of how long each chapter is. Even if the reading level itself can even be easier than middle grade novels sometimes.

Another light reading activity I like is looking for more podcasts to listen to. I kind of feel like I should be spending more time on the internet in Hebrew, but I just haven’t found anything that really hooks me in. Right now it’s easier to get me to do things that feel like they have a purpose than trying to do things for fun. I used to go to the online bookstore to sort of practice reading, but now I’ve sort of stopped because I’m just having too much trouble actually reading the books I bought.

I also just found some Hebrew books at the thrift store. I’ve been sort of searching for them ever since I’ve wanted to read books in Hebrew. I guess it’s an interesting experience actually reading a physical book in Hebrew. One thing I keep doing is picking up the book upside down. When I read I really notice how slow my reading speed is since I can’t change the text size. I also can’t easily highlight or look up words, so I’m more encouraged to guess based on context. It kind of makes it more tiring, but at the same time it’s more relaxing.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sun Mar 27, 2022 6:04 am

It looks like Anki is still at the center of my language learning routine. I don’t think it’s really a bad thing. It’s the one activity that I have to be consistent at and it’s also one of the only things I can really stay consistent at. I definitely spend more time doing other things, but I find I rotate around different activities a lot. Sometimes I want to listen to a lot more podcasts, sometimes I’m really in mood for a lot of TV, sometimes I want to read novels, sometimes I’ll prefer to take online courses. One thing I’ve been able to do lately is watch university lectures. I could sort of “watch” them one year ago or maybe even two years ago. It just wasn’t comfortable for extensive listening. It worked for intensive listening, but that isn’t practical for videos that are usually 30 minutes-two hours long. I think for intensive listening I prefer videos to be ten minutes and under. I think once I noticed I could watch news clips more extensively that opened me up to being able to watch university lectures since the register seems fairly similar.

Last year news clips seemed to be mostly intensive listening. Now they’re mostly extensive. A lot of the time the details feel sort of fuzzy. I sort of let them wash over me and I often don’t care about the details. Sometimes unknown words and phrases will jump out at me. Particularly when I don’t know a subject very well.

What isn’t at the center of my language learning routine anymore is memorizing new words. I think that goal makes sense at the upper beginner level and lower intermediate level. It’s way easier to learn new vocabulary at that level since I came across it a lot more. Exposing myself to my target language was also very mentally taxing. So I couldn’t put a lot of time into it. Right now the best thing for me to measure is how much time I spend in my target language. That way if I’m reading or listening to something challenging, it doesn’t frustrate me if I don’t actually learn many new words. I’m at the stage where I could find more challenging material that has more unknown words. Unfortunately it ends up feeling too hard for me to be able to actually finish anything. Sort of like the issue I had with university lectures.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Apr 20, 2022 6:07 am

I think my listening has continued to improve. It’s a lot easier to binge TV shows now. So it’s a lot easier to just get the hours in. I can only stand so many podcasts a day and I don’t think they really push my listening abilities. They can definitely push my language skills, but that’s sort of separate from my raw listening comprehension. I’m also continuing with my university lectures since they’re generally more interesting than podcasts.

What I notice with university lectures is that my mind is tired after I listen to them for a while. They don’t feel challenging in the same way TV shows feel challenging. With TV shows I kind of have to work at keeping up. Since lectures are usually slow and clear, I obviously don’t get the same feeling from them. Some of the podcasts I listen to also feel like listening to university lectures. Probably because I’m naturally evolving to more advanced podcasts. Before I listened to any podcasts I understood and didn’t completely hate. Now I make more of an effort to listen to podcasts I’m interested in.

Reading is still a challenge since getting into a habit of reading is hard in general. I used to love reading, but eventually stopped. It’s challenging to find books I’m interested in AND find a good time to read. I guess when books are good enough, any time is good to read. Sadly that hasn’t happened in a few years. Luckily little free libraries are common where I live, so it’s easy to find books to read with no pressure.

I once found a book on economics. The first chapter was kind of interesting, but it quickly got boring. Eventually I had to admit I just won’t finish that book and I dropped it off at a random little free library. The library I dropped it off at actually had multiple languages. I remember it had Swedish, German and a few other languages. No Hebrew though.

Germanic languages are always weird for me. I feel like I should be able to read and understand them, but I mostly can’t. Hebrew was like the other way around for a long time. I felt like I shouldn’t be able to read and understand it, but I can. For a while I think I could genuinely read Germanic languages better than Hebrew at a glance, but as soon as I looked closer I would realize I’m better at Hebrew. Right now this still happens to me with French. I can sort of skip French or glance at it and sometimes get a good overview of what it means. But with Hebrew there might be a slight delay. But as soon as I actually start reading properly and trying to notice details I realize my Hebrew is better.

I just finished a book in Hebrew. I think I took too long to read it. It was my first adult fiction novel. It’s always hard to get the level right for fiction. I went for adult fiction since the last book I read was too childish for me. I don’t know which fiction book I’ll read next. I think I’ll just wait for some book that actually excites me. One thing that’s unique to fiction is being able to get carried away by the plot.

For now I’m just sticking with my non-fiction books. I find I tolerate re-reading them a lot more. That also helps me learn the concepts in the book better. A lot of the “unknown words” I encounter are actually proper nouns and concepts I don’t know. So when I’m doing intensive reading, a lot of my reading might be skimming the English Wikipedia article just so I have some rough idea what the book is taking about.I think reading an English Wikipedia article is preferable to the Hebrew article, since the Hebrew article will probably have a lot of unknown vocabulary and it will be slower to read. It’s also likely to be a topic I’m not interested in yet.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sat May 14, 2022 9:46 pm

I’ve sort of been sick lately, so I haven’t been able to study as much as I want to. This mainly means I’ve toned down how much I use anki. I haven’t really been exposed to a lot of new vocabulary, so I haven’t really been making all that many Anki cards. I think I have about 20-30 new cards available that I can study when I feel up to it.

I’ve also been culling a lot of Anki cards that aren’t that great. I’ve been trying to get into that habit. When I study other languages, I’m planning on starting Anki earlier. Which will mean I’ll have to cull more cards as well.

Even though I’m not really learning a lot of new vocabulary, it doesn’t mean I’m not challenging myself. It’s still fairly challenging to watch TV. So I watch shows with short episodes and easy to follow plots. People tend to talk faster in those shows, but I think that also speeds up my progress.

Reading is still pretty hard, especially if I’m about to get a migraine. On some of those migraine days I can barely even read stuff in English, let alone Hebrew. I find with migraines it’s hard to move my eyes. Especially for right to left text, which gets even worse when it’s poorly formatted.

On days where I couldn’t really challenge myself I just listened to a lot of podcasts which aren’t too challenging. Time logging has really helped me stay motivated on those days since I’d often end up with 2-4 hours of listening.

I also notice that cramming Finnish on Duolingo has sort of helped. When I watch the learner videos, I notice that I recognize more and more Finnish words. I’m getting better at matching them up to the English translation. I’m nowhere near being able to understand it without English subtitles, but that’s not my goal. My goal is just to make Finnish more pleasant to study if I ever do end up being passionate about it.

I’m also sort of frustrated about how I can see a lot of upsides to studying practical languages like French or German, but I just can’t stick to it. There seems to be a lot of good German documentaries and French films. It doesn’t seem like that stuff motivates me enough. It seems like the way the language or culture “feels” to me motivates me the most. I’m sort of hoping that maybe after learning more Icelandic I’ll be more motivated to study German. I sort of doubt it because French is pretty transparent to me and I still don’t feel motivated to study it. I tried to study it a bit by listening to InnerFrench. I actually understood that podcast decently, but I quickly just got annoyed at French. It sort of seems like I’m motivated by languages being obscure or impractical.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue May 24, 2022 1:06 am

Getting into reading has been very challenging. This year I’ve been trying to get more into reading in general. At first I wanted to just improve at reading in Hebrew, but now I don’t even care which language it’s in. I’ve been back to using Firefox and I’ve been loving the articles they suggest. I like that they aren’t too personalized, but still interesting. I use it a lot to procrastinate on language learning.

My excuse is that I’m reading and getting out of the language learning slump. Language learning can be a pretty isolating hobby for me since I sort of made it my whole personality. I let myself do that because it definitely did help me get into a routine for language learning. I’m also just not naturally disciplined. I can sort of cheat by getting addicted to things. Right now I’m trying to gradually shift my focus to finding a good career. I don’t mind if that becomes my whole personality as well.

One thing I’m motivated to do in Hebrew, but not English is listening to podcasts. Listening to podcasts is pretty awkward for me in general. It’s just hard for me to find time to listen to podcasts. At least when it’s in English. When it’s in Hebrew it’s suddenly super easy to find time to listen to podcasts. Maybe because listening to podcasts in Hebrew is an easy way to study Hebrew. I also find a lot of English podcasts get too podcasty for me. I think another issue I have with podcasts is that a lot of them aren’t very dense. I find that annoying in English, but super helpful for languages learning. I also find as time goes on I naturally pick denser and more interesting podcasts. In English I definitely prefer more dense and short content like Reddit.

On thing I’ve been struggling with is specifically studying Hebrew. The main reason I’m motivated to study is that it’s part of my everyday routine. I sort of feel like I like the way studying Hebrew makes me feel more than the language itself. At least this is how I’ve been feeling for the past year or so. I know it’s not entirely true because when I try out more practical languages I definitely miss studying Hebrew. At least that shows Hebrew isn’t interchangeable with other languages. I can’t just switch to French and expect for it to feel the same. Since Hebrew has been part of my life for a while, I’ve just sort of gotten used to it. I know I’m still very obsessed with it, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. So I avoid talking about it with people because I know I’ll get carried away.

One thing I’m trying to do is get back in touch with why I wanted to learn Hebrew in the first place. It’s kind of hard to because it’s just a huge part of my life. I have moments of enjoying myself, but it isn’t quite the same. Not quite having a reason makes me feel isolated. Since most people’s reaction is asking me why I chose Hebrew. I guess the average person would have a real practical reason, while I just don’t. I guess filling a void is a practical reason, but it’s no one’s business.

I guess when it comes to reading I keep trying to find new approaches. I still find it hard to read articles. I guess I can easily read super short and easy articles, but it doesn’t feel like they count. When I read articles that feel like they count, it still ends up being super hard. I guess I’m noticing some progress in reading. Right now I can read summaries of TV shows on Wikipedia without putting much effort into it. I remember when that used to be super hard. I guess reading is sort of in a catch-22. I don’t read as much as I should because it’s hard and I find it hard because I don’t read as much as I should. For now I still find non-fiction books easier to read than articles. So I’m doing more of that. One approach I changed is how I learn vocabulary. I used to sort of chronologically go through unknown words I’ve highlighted. I found that very tedious, so I found it hard to stick to. Now I just look up the most recent words I’ve struggled with. That way it’s more likely they’re actually unknown words for me now. If they’re not truly unknown words I sometimes make a new Anki card to replace a stale card or a new card if I think the sentence structure is interesting enough. I’ve definitely noticed getting exposed to unique sentence structures in Anki makes it easier to understand them. My strategy is to pick a sentence where the structure is unfamiliar, but I know what it means based on context. Like I said before I find most of these sentences in dictionary definitions, but I also find them in non-fiction articles and books on a familiar topic.
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Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sun May 29, 2022 3:34 pm

I probably mentioned this before, but I think I’m finally doing a good time of trimming down my time on Anki. When I first tried trimming it down I actually ended up spending about the same amount of time since I had a lot of reviews to catch up on. Now it’s finally been trimmed down. I used to do around 20-30 minutes on average. Now I do 8-10 and maybe 15. I think one thing I finally learned to do is delete older cards that just don’t feel good. I’ll still keep cards that don’t feel good if they’re new and keep older cards around that feel good.

If I encounter the words I deleted on my deck in the wild again I can add the card back in. I find Anki actually can help with words that should have been obvious to me. I’m more or less preparing for how I’ll tackle Icelandic. One thing I won’t do is try to create one card for one lemma. I got this idea from a guy who was learning Slovak. He just treated different forms of a word as different words. Another thing I’ll experiment with is doing duplicates of cards. This may make my deck to bloated, but maybe it won’t be so bad if I delete cards often.

I’m not even sure at which stage I’ll start making cards. I think I’ll start making text to speech cards as soon as I start IcelandicOnline again. I’ll be going with text to speech cards, so I don’t continue my bad habits of mispronouncing words in my head. One of the big challenges I have is mispronouncing words in my head and being satisfied since I can understand it just fine. I don’t have this issue with Hebrew as much since my comprehension took a huge hit whenever I didn’t know how words were pronounced. That’s what makes Germanic and Romance languages sort of challenging. I can sometimes decently read French, but butcher the pronunciation completely. Interestingly this doesn’t quite happen with Spanish. I sometimes look at some Spanish words and I think I don’t know them, but after re-reading them a few times I realize I do.

I honestly still don’t know when I’ll start Icelandic. I think I’ll probably transition into another main project like programming or something that feels more practical. When I feel settled in enough and I think I need a break maybe I’ll get started on Icelandic. I’ve never legitimately switched my main language before. I’m still trying to figure out what I want out of language learning. Everyone else keeps trying to tell me what I want, but that just makes me want it less. I did actually try studying Icelandic on the side about two years ago. It didn’t work out. It felt too distracting and weird. It was trying to just take over my whole brain space and it kept colliding with Hebrew. That doesn’t seem to happen with other languages. It felt way different than when I tried to study French or German on the side. When I studied French and German I felt resentful that I wasn’t studying Hebrew. With Icelandic I didn’t get that feeling. I just almost felt like it would take over if I wasn’t careful. With Finnish I don’t feel any of those feelings. It’s nice to dabble in it when I feel like it. I don’t feel resentment or too much passion for it. So it’s the perfect language for when I really feel like switching it up.

I think reducing my Anki time has helped me enjoy Hebrew more of the time. I still need to keep up with Anki to give my studying a bit of structure. I don’t do well with a lot of structure, but I also don’t do well with no structure at all. I can’t just do what I want or study in a school-like system. I guess for me Anki has been my happy medium.

I guess I’ll never be a hyperpolyglot who juggles a whole bunch of languages. I don’t think I’d enjoy it either. I guess I like to feel the soul of each language. I can’t imagine doing that learning 10 languages at once. I know that’s kind of woo-woo, but it seems to be my main motivation. For me it’s hard to not have practical reasons. I can definitely think of several reasons to learn French or German and even think of things I like about French and German culture. Still doesn’t motivate me.
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