zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:49 am

Saim wrote:More people in Barcelona (especially when including the metropolitan area) are Spanish-dominant and many don't speak Catalan at all so it's not really an issue of them "also" speaking Spanish.

If you ever do the opposite experiment (i.e. speak to everyone in Catalan),you'll probably find this bilingualism doesn't exist, and you'll likely get far more "negative language-related experiences".


But a general population with about 75% self reporting as speakers of Catalan (in 2001 survey), I'd say the bilingualism does exist. I don't doubt that negative experiences exist for Catalan speakers, I've seen that (and for other languages of Spain too). By calling it exceptional, I'm saying that it is much more developed (and I support the regional language policies) than other regions in Europe that call themselves bilingual and not that everyone IS bilingual -- that would be ridiculous of me.

Saim wrote:I certainly don't want to deny or minimise your experience, all I'm saying is that Catalan is a minority language in Catalonia, and the level of negative attitudes towards Catalan among Spaniards and among foreigners in Barcelona is generally not reflected in the attitudes of Catalan speakers towards Spanish.


Well, except that is exactly what you're doing. My experience aside, I don't doubt that the negative dominant language attitudes are more prevalent.
0 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Approaching the end of the 6WC

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Mar 13, 2019 3:35 pm

I've stumbled across some music in Hebrew that I'm enjoying quite a bit. Note the key phrase "tahabil tirbah" (תהבל תרבח) is really a saying in Moroccan Arabic ("be simple (dumb) and profit" or something like "don't overthink it").



Clearly not yet in the space where I can "get" this directly. But I should now start to add music and other cultural content to my listening - I'm excited by how easily this type of fusion moves across cultures I don't tend to focus on (from Arabic to Yemenite to Russian... to name a few.)

The 6WC ends in a few days, I've really appreciated the impact that it had on my Hebrew but everything else suffered and for various reasons I think this may be my last 6WC challenge for a while. It generates frustration and some time challenges I'm not enjoying. However, it's helped me get into the habit of a daily Pimlseur lesson and frequent Anki work and for that I'm very grateful.
6 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:22 pm

just a quick note ... as I'm going to try to also learn to touch type with hebrew here are the two tools I'm using:

https://sense-lang.org/typing/tutor/keyboardingHE.php

and, as Deinonysus pointed out:

https://ie9.ieonchrome.com/#http://www. ... r/hthe.htm (on Chrome)

I think I've learned the home row but this feels very unnatural as I don't touch type in other languages and I'm going to need to break my bad habits of one handed dominant typing....
3 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

6WC, Time, Quality and Joy

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:23 am

The 6WC ended last night and I got in over 70 hrs of Hebrew. That about 100 minutes a day over the period, which I'm impressed with and do not think it is something I could maintain. But some of that was really just watching tv or films (not intensively). My learnings?

The 6WC does help to spend a lot of time on a target language, but the competitive aspect is distracting to me. Because I was looking for activity that would generate a fair amount of time to record I choose activities that where time intensive. This meant that I re-discovered Pimsleur and watching TV. Pimsleur is just great, at my level, I found it extremely useful and will continue to use - one lesson a day with one or two times of review (maybe more if it starts to kick my butt). Surprisingly, the TV that I watched went from zero understanding to about 20%... that is a nice surprise and I really like that I got listening in like that early into the learning curve. I don't think I would have spent so much time listening at this point in my study if it didn't "count". So the surprise was that it is something I'm finding enjoyable, useful and worthwhile.

However, I feel that I will pare that down a bit to work on more intensive listening - either taking notes, transcribing or sub2srs this content. I think it is very easy to learn to be comfortable not understanding audio to the point it being counterproductive.

I've also learned that I'd like to go back to tracking beyond "time spent on task". So, personally, I'm going to add two soft measures or "multipliers" to tracking. Let's call the first one "quality" to cover material relevance, learning focus and content intensity. For example, a movie with little dialog might have my full attention, I may take a lot of notes, but if it is sparse on dialog, well that's low content intensity. "Quality" is intrinsic to the material and my perception of it as corresponding to the task at hand (Hello, Robert Persig).

The second, I'm going to call "joy" (it seems to be the thing right now) or enjoyment. I could just stick everything into this but sometimes low quality brings lots of joy. Life is full of mac and cheese moments. So "joy" tracking is going to be about me - my attentiveness, my fulfilment, my mood, how I feel about the time spent. Was I just running through the actions, getting the time in, or was I really getting emotional value from the experience. Right now, my "joy" with Pimsleur is rather high (and I'm really surprised to write that, because I've had a deep hate of Pimsleur in the past).

The 6WC fails to really push for "joy" or "quality" - just look at the number of people that find it overly stressful or drop out or post (what seems to me) as relatively low quality study time.

By tracking how I feel about learning and how I feel about the material, perhaps I'll learn something along the way?

Let me know if you think that's useful or if it is something you do...

(and the first thing I did this morning was wake up early to do my iTalki Hebrew class! I still have Pimsleur and Anki joyfully waiting for me! :D)
6 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
x 5821
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:47 am

That’s a bit like what I was trying to explain to you that time about how I try to choose what to study based on what will be useful to me at the time, but also on my mood and receptiveness to the material. Even great material can be useless if I’m too tired or stressed to absorb it, but those tired moments may be perfect for mindlessly staring at cartoons, letting my subconscious absorb and assimilate the language without my conscious mind getting in the way.

I found the 6WC counterproductive too. Like you, I ended up doing a bunch of activities that gave a lot of time, but were not necessarily the most useful to me in the moment. Some of it was good. For example, I should be doing a lot of reading, but I ended up skipping a lot of small tasks like regular self-talk because I didn’t feel like writing so many five and ten minute tweets.
4 x

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Mar 22, 2019 8:40 am

I really appreciate reading the logs here. I've been attentively following a few and I am enjoying reading about those that touch the same languages and material I'm actively studying (Hebrew, German) but also the logs that cover languages I'm interested in (even distantly) or are written in languages I read are inspiring.

This week brings me to my longest streak with Anki this year - 10 days! I've been using Anki a lot but rather inconsistently over the last 3 months (and substituting Memrise for a while). I'm building up my own Pimsleur deck for the first 30 lessons of Hebrew, which is going forward well. 10 days is nothing but I'm amused that it is the current streak.

But Pimsleur is beginning to kick me in the head. I started Lesson 25 yesterday, I was tired and I just did not finish it (hmm, starting a lesson at 1 in the morning might not be the best idea.) Even before that, I've noticed for the last week, that I'm having more difficulty answering the prompt before the answer is given. It's on the tip of my tongue... And the constant going from English to Hebrew is taxing. I been thinking that I want to do dialog cards next - where the right answer is answering, or commenting on the the current sentence. These cards would be Hebrew to Hebrew. i may even start with single word cards to read like :

?בעברית "cat" איך אתה אומר


Anyway, I'm going to finish Pimsleur 25 today (if it doesn't put me to sleep) and over the weekend, I'll probably start a second wave review from lesson 15 or so, much like an Assimil wave. So next week I should finish with Pimsleur I and start on II. And throw in more Assimil in there too.

Last week, my teacher noticed that I was more active and more focused on this. That's definitely the positive results of the 6WC.
6 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Busy around languages but not really learning!

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:36 pm

This entire week has been busy, I somehow got stuck on Pimsleur Unit 25 did some intense Audacity stuff with it (more on that) and ... stopped studying anything! well, Brun Ugle and I did have our exchange, I did a little German talking and a few Anki crds but nothing like the last weeks. I'm busy starting another entrepreneur project and the team there needed a lot of work to get going.

So tonight, I thought I'd write a little about the Audacity work that I did because I found something interesting (for me), that I thought I might share.

First off, Pimsleur Unit 25 kicked my butt. And I wasn't going to take it - so I decided to do a echoing exercise as somewhat described by Kjellin. Here the objective is to repeat sentences for prosody, understanding and recognition a gazillion times. More or less.

In Audacity, I found that i could use the Sound Finder function to tag all of the individual sentences.

Screenshot 2019-03-24 at 12.26.38.png


A little fiddling around and the settings I found worked best are:

Screenshot 2019-03-24 at 12.27.12.png


The key being the minimum duration of silence between sounds (0.200). That created tags for all the content, I then went through the sound file and deleted all the English sentences. About 15 minutes to get close to 200 sound segments.

Screenshot 2019-03-24 at 12.27.42.png


Then multiple exports and a really nice set of sentences (with some repeats) that I can either work on standalone or enter into Anki.

Screenshot 2019-03-24 at 12.28.14.png


Now I just need to go study!
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
6 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby cjareck » Sat Mar 30, 2019 10:44 pm

That is exactly the way I prepare audio for my flashcards. It really helps to learn the correct pronunciation.
1 x
Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Aug 15, 2019 8:43 am

Wow. My last entry was four and a half months ago.

My life was partially taken over by family health stuff (I spent a lot of time taking care of my father in California. He's doing ok now.) and a couple of new ventures and ... who knows? Time flies and I spent very little of it learning or consolidating languages.

I have gotten to speak my main 3-4 languages on a regular basis and everything else has suffered.

I've decided to close up some projects here and there and languages should also really be more about focusing on a limited number. So, as I look at working again on languages - I'm going to focus on German, Hebrew and Tibetan at most...

I feel there is so much inertia when restarting that it is really hard to figure out what and how to restart.

So maybe a little Pimsleur today.

Image
19 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
x 5821
Contact:

Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu Aug 15, 2019 6:44 pm

Yay! Zenmonkey’s back! :D
5 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: MorkTheFiddle and 2 guests