General language log

[sporedandroid]

I’m sort of noticing some subtle progress when I listen to Finnish music. I can spot words I couldn’t spot before. I’m also starting to notice more words that I’ve studied on Anki. I still feel pretty overwhelmed by Anki even though I’m not studying all that much. It just seems like a lot of things to learn and review. I did listen to a podcast in Finnish about how to increase your energy levels. I did not understand the advice. I still understood bits and pieces of it. It was about 30 minutes long which is a good length for getting into podcasts. It isn’t too long, but it’s also long enough to have redundancies. Shorter podcasts are often too dense with information.

I’m still mostly taking a break from Hebrew, but I decided to listen to some podcasts in Hebrew again. I just felt antsy. At first it felt like too much effort, but I quickly got back into the podcast. I was curious what the podcast would say about the war. I didn’t do a great job of following it. I don’t know how much of this due to my level in Hebrew or just being bad at current events. I did hear some comments about how much Israel actually needs support from the United States and Europe.

I think so far this fits well with my 90/10 split for studying two languages at once. The ratio used to be reversed. I was pretty much only studying Hebrew and I dabbled a bit in Finnish. Now I’m mainly studying Finnish and I sometimes revisit Hebrew. When the ratio gets too close to 50/50 it just feels hard to be passionate. I think for this last year it’s been 50/50.

Maybe I’ll shift the ratio a bit by introducing audiobooks and reading at the same time in Hebrew. My reading level has really been annoying me and I think this could also help with my intermediate plateau. Maybe one reason I feel tired while listening to Hebrew is because I’m filling in a lot of blanks. Reading might help me pay more attention to unfamiliar words and structures and actually learn them. I’m not sure I can progress all that much just by letting words wash over me.

Right now I do let a lot of words wash over me when I listen to stuff in Finnish. I don’t have a large vocabulary, so I don’t expect to understand everything. For now I mainly watch YouTube videos.

[sporedandroid]

I’m going on a literal holiday soon. Anki has been kind of overwhelming me, so I decided to change the settings so I won’t study new cards. I don’t know how regularly I’ll even study. I guess I’ll just feel more on top of things if I slow down on studying new cards.

[sporedandroid]

I didn’t study at all during my holiday. I just wanted a real holiday and Anki was really overwhelming me. Now that I’m heading to the airport I’m catching up on my reviews. I have no idea how many reviews I have. The limit is 100. I think I’ll try to finish them all up. The plane ride is super long.

[sporedandroid]

I’m struggling to catch up on my Anki reviews. Right now I’m suspending any card that annoys me. That would speed up how quickly I can catch up. It doesn’t help that I’m jet lagged. So I’ve been fairly low on motivation in general. Even though I sort of like Finnish better in a lot of ways, I also seem to have less motivation to study it compared to Hebrew. I guess I had strong enough reasons to study Hebrew, even though there’s several things I didn’t like about it. My progress sort of feels slower in Finnish, but maybe that’s because it’s a harder language. I really don’t know.

[sporedandroid]

I’m all caught up on my Anki reviews. I had a spike of energy at 3 am, so I decided to catch up on all my reviews. Tomorrow it looks like I only have 36 cards due. I guess tomorrow I’ll start studying new cards again. I think suspending cards I didn’t want to review also worked well. I had another spike of energy today, so I ended up studying the cards I suspended.

[sporedandroid]

I’m still at that weird stage where you seem to fluctuate a lot and it’s hard to tell if you’re truly progressing or not. I just watched a Finnished video and I understood most of it without subtitles. It was about whether you have to live in Finland to learn Finnish, so it was a fairly predictable topic for me. I also sometimes feel like I mostly understand some predictable YouTube videos, but it’s hard for me to tell if I’m just good at guessing or actually understanding. With the Finnished videos I can actually check how much I understand by the video with subtitles. I still haven’t gotten into the habit of listening to podcasts, but I probably should. I think I’ll get back into watching Finnished videos in order to do more active listening practice. The other YouTube videos are more passive listening. I think passive listening definitely plays an important role as well.

[sporedandroid]

I’ve sort of been getting a bit more in the mood for studying Hebrew again. I just listened to a podcast in Hebrew and enjoyed some music in Hebrew. The podcast was about freedom of speech and racism. I don’t feel like that podcast episode made a super clear point. Maybe my level is too low or maybe it was truly not a clear point. It’s hard for me to tell. There was some legalese and I had a hard time following it. The guest on the podcast did as well. So I wasn’t alone. Maybe soon I’ll buy an audiobook version of a book I already own. I want to improve my reading level. After taking a break, my reading did seem to somewhat improve or feel smoother. Or maybe I’m just feeling extra clear today. This whole clarity thing is frustrating.

Studying Finnish also felt easier. Maybe because I’m more clear in general. For Finnish I’ve decided to just start suspending more cards and studying the suspended cards when I actually really feel like studying. This has worked well because I actually try to analyze the suspended cards and figure out why they’re hard. Sometimes it’s some unknown grammar concept and sometimes it’s just helpful to learn the etymology of certain words. I know it’s not “necessary” to study etymology, but I find it super helpful.

[sporedandroid]

I just rewatched a video that I sort of studied the transcript of. I decided some sentences were “too easy” to add to Anki. When I watched the video I realized those sentences weren’t in fact “too easy” to study. I could not understand them when I watched the video. So I decided to add them to Anki.

That whole video is way above my level, but it’s fairly short and pretty interesting. I think I’ll keep rewatching videos to do more active study. Lately I’ve been doing mostly passive study and Anki. I think I’ll continue the strategy where I mostly focus on the easy stuff, but focus on the more challenging stuff when I really feel like it. I think this helps me get through Anki reviews more quickly.

I also like having transcripts on a word document because then I feel less pressured to study it all in one session. A lot of the time I’ll just look at a few sentences in one session and try to analyze things that seem confusing. If it makes sense I add them to Anki.

[sporedandroid]

Studying has been kind of challenging. I just don’t feel like my mind is all that clear. Even though I’m suspending a bunch of Anki cards, I still get a bunch of reviews. I’m also being more honest about not remembering stuff. I’ve sort of slowed down at creating new Anki cards. I did start “reading” some Finnish articles. They’re still mostly above my level. I can sort of skim Wikipedia articles and get basic information, but that’s about it. Right now I’m creating parallel texts with machine translation.

At my own pace I’ll go through each sentence and see how much sense the translation makes to me. A lot of the time machine translation makes no sense, so I end up ignoring it. Right now it seems like a good time to do this because it’s fairly time consuming, but it barely counts as studying. It’s more like preparing for real studying later on. I know there’s probably a more “efficient” way of creating parallel texts or Anki cards, but I like to see it as one way I get exposed to the language. Out of curiosity I also “read” an article about the Israel Palestine conflict. I’m curious about what perspective Finland has. I got started “reading” Finnish articles because I was googling this Finnish YouTuber. I was curious about his last name because it didn’t sound very Finnish to me. It turned out his father is Bulgarian, which explained the non-Finnish last name.

I think Finnish is just a harder language to study than Hebrew, but I think I’m also more casual about Finnish. Finnish feels less foreign to me, but there’s also more grammar and vocabulary to learn. I still haven’t quite hit that point where you’re pretty much intermediate and you suddenly progress a lot. I’m also not too motivated to listen to Finnish podcasts. There was a lockdown right when I could sort of listen to Hebrew podcasts, so there was this huge block of time in my day when I just listened to podcasts. I guess I can get the gist of some Finnish podcasts, but I just don’t have the patience at the moment.

[sporedandroid]

My patience for Finnish podcasts is just so low at the moment. I don’t feel like my listening comprehension is necessarily worse than it was when I first started listening to podcasts in Hebrew. I’m just not used to my listening comprehension being so low. At least with videos it’s easy to find other ways to be entertained. I know I generally prefer videos over podcasts. Maybe I’ll have to start exercising more again. I’ve been slacking off lately. I don’t even think the first Hebrew podcasts I listened to were particularly interesting. They definitely weren’t able to be interesting at the level I was at. But with the Finnish podcasts I just quickly lose patience. Maybe my Hebrew level actually was higher. I really don’t know.