30:30 Vocabulary Challenge - July 2023

[rdearman]

Col. "Hannibal" Smith: "Overkill is underrated!" So I'll be thinking about that when I'm struggling with my thirty!

Oh! That describes this challenge to a T ! We are definitely going for overkill here!

[diaconia]

Col. "Hannibal" Smith: "Overkill is underrated!" So I'll be thinking about that when I'm struggling with my thirty!

Oh! That describes this challenge to a T ! We are definitely going for overkill here!

Speaking of "T", at the end of the month some of us might be thinking along the lines of Mr T when he said to Murdock, "You crazy, fool!"

[rdearman]

I've had a question about what words you can use. E.g. can you study more than one language. The answer is yes, and I've updated the original post.

[daveprine]

Interesting. I'm trying to find a way this works for me. I'm mainly refreshing my German as well as my Italian (wedding in September and one family has guests coming from Italy--I was told some folks wouldn't be speaking much English. Voila! Time for daving!). Plus I've started a few other languages recently.

But I'd have to make sure I keep the new vocab separate from what I'd learned at one time and forgot. Might be tricky to keep those straight.

But also, If I'm learning, say, 6 new words a day in five languages, that might be manageable. More so than 30 in one language?

Of course, I could make it easy on myself and pick a language that uses compounding. Indonesian is a great example. If you know a few words, you can understand the compound expressions. Like English, if you know: bath, bed, eat, etc. plus room, you can easily learn bathroom, bedroom, dining room, etc.

Chinuk Wawa is similar. I just started studying that anyway (hoping to take a class in the fall), so maybe I'll go that route.

I know the point isn't to find a language that allows you to win the challenge easily. It's to learn vocab in a language you already strive to learn. So I'll see how I can make the challenge work best for me. I just have to figure what language do I need and want to learn that much vocab that quickly.

One other caveat: like many challenges, and many attempts at consistent studying, life just throws a brick at your head. I was doing well with studying 25 words a week in 3 languages each for 4 weeks (so 100 words in each language). I made it through 2 4-week periods (6 languages in all), and the plan was to slowly build on those while starting another 3 languages. But we were selling our house, planning to move, I was looking for a job...languages took a back seat. We now will be moving into a new house on June 30th, so moving stuff out of storage, unpacking, and my part-time job, plus day-to-day stuff will eat up time and maybe prevent me from time to time. So who knows if I'll be able to maintain this challenge? When have I EVER won any of these challenges?

I haven't. But then again, I have. They say starting is half-won, or something like that. Even if I fail, I still did a fair amount. So maybe I can try and fail, knowing I made a small dent, but a dent nonetheless.

All this is me thinking out loud. Sorry you went through the trouble of reading it.

But since I have you on the line: Oh challenge-master, does it have to be 30 every day or on average? Cramming more than 30 might be a pain but help me (and anyone else) front-load or play catch up. Curious to know, you incredible sadist.

[rdearman]

But since I have you on the line: Oh challenge-master, does it have to be 30 every day or on average? Cramming more than 30 might be a pain but help me (and anyone else) front-load or play catch up. Curious to know, you incredible sadist.

No, it is 30 more words, ever single day. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a challenge, it would just be an average.

"I can shoot straight if I don't get excited." - Hannibal Smith

[Aloyse]

Interesting challenge.
How much time do you budget per day?

[rdearman]

Interesting challenge.
How much time do you budget per day?

Me personally I did about 2-3 hours each day, although it was broken up. But I also listen to the words in a loop all day in the background, and in the foreground when I am actively studying them. I was doing test runs of this last week and even when I was doing three hours I was still only retaining 80 to 90% of the words at the end of the day when I tested myself. So it is definitely a challenge but I figure it'll be worth it even if you don't manage to do 900 words.

[diaconia]

Thanks for the Google spreadsheet! I have it set for Russian ("answer") and German ("hint"). I also did a test run today and faired well with over 20 words (day's not quite over). I'm using the vocabulary from my Assimil course and each chapter easily gives me thirty new words, especially if I use the supplementary material and the notes. I've decided to make 1 spreadsheet per day, but I don't know if I'll have problems consolidating my lists.

So far, I've found that creating the list(s) is the most time-consuming part. It's taking me a while to select words and short phrases that I think I can memorize in a day. In terms of using the spreadsheet, I discovered that inputting everything correctly (so that it satisfies the IF-function) will be the biggest challenge for me!

[Aloyse]

Me personally I did about 2-3 hours each day

Thanks. I suspected it would be too much work for me and it sounds like it really is not suitable at the moment.

[coldrainwater]

In terms of using the spreadsheet, I discovered that inputting everything correctly (so that it satisfies the IF-function) will be the biggest challenge for me!

In case it helps anyone, I am setting mine up for passive recall while letting my input column accept one of several correct answers taken from a list of words separated by commas (a comma plus a space to be exact). A screenshot of what I mean is probably the easiest way to show it. This would also work to allow multiple correct spellings if that was desired. I pasted the Google Sheet formula below so it can simply be copied and pasted as needed.

Code: Select all

=IF(ISERROR(MATCH(D2,SPLIT(C2, ", " , 1,1),0)),0,1)