Expug's 2019 Log - Reasonable Learning

[StringerBell]

Thanks for posting those resources. I took a look at the first Peace Corp Georgian lesson which went through the letters of the alphabet. I don't think I will ever seriously study this language, but the alphabet is really intriguing. I didn't see you mention on your log why you started to study it (though I could have missed it); was there something about the language (or resources) that really appealed to you?

[Expugnator]

Thanks for posting those resources. I took a look at the first Peace Corp Georgian lesson which went through the letters of the alphabet. I don't think I will ever seriously study this language, but the alphabet is really intriguing. I didn't see you mention on your log why you started to study it (though I could have missed it); was there something about the language (or resources) that really appealed to you?

It was a mix of cultural affinity, linguistical curiosity and a fondness for the alphabet. I like it how Georgia has some culturally similar elements, at the same time I like the architecture and the landscapes. I really dream of visiting someday.

====================
The weekend was mostly partying at the annual family get-together at my father-in-law's side, which takes place in the countryside. I couldn't charge my wife's phone in time for usaing the scarce mobile connection and so I ended up losing my streak for most of my Clozemaster languages.

As I came back home on Sunday, I at least managed to get more material. I'm probably going to give Shtisel, zenmonkey's suggestion, a try. The problem is that it seems to have hardcoded Russian subs which I won't be able to translate.

Today I had an issue with my Mandarin audiobooks player. It seemed to fail to load the ads and so decided not to load any audio either. I tried on mobile data, too. I have to check the desktop version at home as I don't know how to access it from my phone, and any third-party audio streaming is blocked by default at the desktop here.

As for Mammon's second season, I'll be watching half the episodes in dubbed French, for that is what I could get hold of. Easy to follow, easy to get distracted from as well. Right now I'm reading an old novel with old orthography plus the TV series in French instead of Norwegian, whcih means I'm momentarily not receiving Norwegian input outside of Clozemaster. Not that I should worry about it, as it's just for this week, then within three weeks again and one more. I'm seriously considering favoring intensive over extensive for my stronger languages at the moment, anyway.

Being as tired as I was, I only did the minimum to start over my Clozemaster streak yesterday and did no reading ahead. That combined with some routine exams I had to take care of today meant I was lagging behind and had to struggle through the German non-fiction and Spanish fiction in daylight time, which delayed my studies even more.

My Greek listening-reading has finally reached a stage where it's fairly productive. There are actually very few unknown words at each paragraph, although their effect on overall incomprehension remains high. I might spend a couple of months on this book and I'm really looking forward to starting my next one. Hope I still have access to both audio and text when the time comes.

L'hébreu tome II is now the way I like to use Assimils: I'm mway beyond the false beginner stage and there are fewer unknown words per lesson, so it's rather at a pre-listening-reading stage with native materials, which I'm really looking forward to being able to purchase as audiobooks.

Today's DLI Indonesian lesson was a breeze. Most of the vocabulary was recycled from the previous lessons, grammar wasn't new to me. I feel like I'm seeing the content from Colloquial but in a learner-friendly rhythm. I even managed to catch up with my usual schedule.

A calm study day in spite of some interruptions. Maybe I can take care of those extra tasks one at a time, split through the week, so as not to lose much time on a given day and end up giving up on studying for that day.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I finished listening to the audiobook Trois baisers, and with this the whole Saga Cortès. Now I'm giving a break on fiction and heading to an essay. Hope it suits me.

Yesterday I worked longer but I still managed to read ahead in non-fiction and Spanish. That means I'm prepared for today which is typically way busier. This morning I did the usual Clozemaster and Duolingo and then I got hold of Hebrew series. I figured out that if I search for series with Hebrew subtitles I'm more likely to find soft Russian subs as well, instead of only hardcoded Russian subs.

This morning I struggled to find an alternative audiobook source for my Mandarin listening-reading of Inferno, as the one I was using simply had its player crash. I spent several tenths of minutes searching for my next novel, as I only have one lined up after this one. I have no reliable source for Mandarin audiobooks, it's rather hit-and-miss. I have to think of a title and check if the audiobook is available.

Mammon is no longer in French. I figured out I'd had download issues and not a problem with missing episodes. They were all in the expected folder and so I could resume watching in Norwegian.

I'm overall stressed with gathering material, especially for the stronger languages. I'd rather just stick to long-standing podcasts for audio and read a book once in a while. I think I'm doing more than enough for maintenance for my French, Spanish and Georgian, just enough for German and Italian.

[Expugnator]

Ok, once again I spent the morning searching for Chinese audiobooks. Now I think the issue is settled for a long time, though. I still haven't found a reliable source for light-reading novels, but at least I remembered my old habit of checking for more from the same user. I also figured out I still have one unread/unlistened to novel by Jo Nesbø in Mandarin which might be my next choice, as I didn't manage to find Origin by Dan Brown as a Mandarin audiobook and Michael Crichton was a miss.

Got my first novel in Icelandic, a translation by Philip Pullman. Credited as the anti-Narnia. My goal was to find it as Mandarin audiobook but I'll be glad to keep it restored for the future.

Doing text input for Romanian is helping me finally activate the language somehow. As with Romanian and Esperanto, chances are way high that whenever I do proper textbook learning I'll do them as an approach to a transparent language.

Still wasted more time in Mandarin, but in the end I managed to catch up. It's become easier now that I'm doing my reading mostly in the evening and both Hebrew and Indonesian lessons take less time than before.

Just checked, found Origin in Greek, both audiobook and ebook. Looks like that's what I'm doing next.

A busy day again. People joke here that it's been an eternal end of semester. I managed to do all but the exercises for the Guarani lesson, which I don't like to rush about.

[Axon]

Ok, once again I spent the morning searching for Chinese audiobooks. Now I think the issue is settled for a long time, though. I still haven't found a reliable source for light-reading novels, but at least I remembered my old habit of checking for more from the same user. I also figured out I still have one unread/unlistened to novel by Jo Nesbø in Mandarin which might be my next choice, as I didn't manage to find Origin by Dan Brown as a Mandarin audiobook and Michael Crichton was a miss.

No idea if it'll work in your region, but I use the app 喜马拉雅, which has a zillion Chinese audiobooks and lots of amateur recordings of translated foreign books.

[Expugnator]

Ok, once again I spent the morning searching for Chinese audiobooks. Now I think the issue is settled for a long time, though. I still haven't found a reliable source for light-reading novels, but at least I remembered my old habit of checking for more from the same user. I also figured out I still have one unread/unlistened to novel by Jo Nesbø in Mandarin which might be my next choice, as I didn't manage to find Origin by Dan Brown as a Mandarin audiobook and Michael Crichton was a miss.

No idea if it'll work in your region, but I use the app 喜马拉雅, which has a zillion Chinese audiobooks and lots of amateur recordings of translated foreign books.

Yes this is the one I use the most, though only the app. It's rather impossible to browse though, that's what I mean with "I don't know what to search for". Feel free to PM me if you have concrete suggestions on translated audiobooks.

-------------------------------------------------
I'm struggling to keep everything on track these days. Yesterday I didn't manage to read ahead in the evening because I had two classes. Today is expected to be lighter even if I have to read everything at once. Well, at least the weather has finally turned to the better, i.e. cooler, at around 18ºC.

Hebrew seems to pair up with the Germanic languages in that the verb to go only means to go on foot, not to travel. Now the exercises have Hebrew scripts only in cursive, so thanks but not, thanks; I'll stick to the transcription as long as it remains.

DLI Indonesian has texts from lesson 9 on. I'm trying my best not to resort to translating them through OCR, as it involves a lot of steps that will cause my learning time to slow down on preptime.

Still a productive day although I've been feeling rather blue. I feel I must change some aspects in my life but I still don't know where to head to.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I managed reading ahead but not much Clozemaster. I had classes unbooked and I didn't have to stay long here, so I could spend more time with family.

I updated Clozemaster to the newest version on Android. Now it finally works as at the desktop, where you get green for correct letters until one is wrong and it's all red. It helps me a lot with languages such as Russian and Greek. First because I will no beforehand if I'm typing the wrong synonym. Second because I'll have a better insight on case and endings overall without having to go through the case lessons, which I do have access to because pro but which I don't find that much effective for vocabular learning.

Meanwhile, the iOs version keeps crashing on my not that old iPad Air, still fully up-to-date.

This morning the girls woke up early. It's good that I manage to see at least one of them in the morning, but I had to take care of them for a while. So I did some CLozemaster but no Greek. As I was expecting to arrive home earlier, I came here by bike, which means less time on the Spanish podcast.

The taking/bringing verbs are very confusing in whatever language. I have trouble with them because in Portuguese we don't really bother about the point of view and the motion of the speaker and the listener, sometimes using trazer and levar apparently invertedly; nor do we make the animate/inanimate distinctions. Russian can be extremely complex with its verbs of motion, and so is Georgian at this bring/take matter, even though it's slightly simpler than Russian in verbs of motion overall. Guarani points to some complexity, though apparently a little less than Georgian. What astonishes me though is that even French poses me a lot of problems as it seems to have animate/inanimate distinction. I even tend to calque it on Italian, which apparently is more straightforward but has French cognates. All this to say I tend to write apportare only to have it corrected as portare.

Starting to get used to the Chinese TV show. My issues so far have been both speed and the bad visibility of the hard-coded Chinese subtitles, but as I get used to the voices of the actors I have to rely less on them.
DLI introduces sebab apa (for what). Wonders if it's commonly used or overly formal.

Lesson 10 has a text as well, but it's mostly recycling vocabulary and syntax from the text, so I can handle it so far.

The day was not that busy and so I managed all the schedule plus Speakly.me plus Duolingo Guarani which I hadn't done in the morning, plus extra Clozemaster. Each of these apps have their advantages and they should complement each other if they were available for the main opaque languages I'm studying. What I like is that they're based upon continuous progress and not SRS.

[Adrianslont]

Expug, I never hear “sebab apa”. I do hear “sebab” and “menyebab” commonly though.

I did a quick google and found there is a recent (2018) song called “sebab apa” but the singer is not young - my age in fact! The google result also had lots of Malaysian results. I suspect you are right, it is probably a bit formal and a bit dated.

Axon or Monox D Fly could give a more definite answer.

[Expugnator]

The weekend was mostly Clozemaster, and here I'm talking mainly about Sunday. Saturday was very busy even though I didn't have classes, and I spent a good deal of it driving. I didn't have time for going through the regular Clozemaster decks and I lost my streak on both Duolingo and Speakly.me. At least I gathered some new audiobooks for French. I'm going to give them a try and then maybe alternate it with (an)other language(s). I've said more than once that I don't think it's worth spending so much time on extensive activities for stronger languages after a given point.

In the evening I caught my girls watching a cartoon with sea life-based characters. When there was some scene involving posters, newspaper headlines and whatever text, they were in Indonesian! It was the well-known cartoon Kiko, already recommended to me. I was impressed at how quickly I could understand the headlines and actually most of the text in Indonesian.

Sunday was way better as I managed to do more Clozemaster, then Duolingo then read ahead.

This morning when I logged on to FB there was a link to an article by VG about Brazilian politics, actually an interview. I decided to read it and was glad to realize I could follow it without any problems as I was familar enough with the context to figure out any few unknow words.

At Guarani I'm starting to translate titles and headlines. I never thought that would happen that fast, and it's perhaps the hardest grammar I've ever studied. It seems the learning curve is becoming shorter in the beginning.

At the same Whatsapp group we're going to start a weekly lesson on a new textbook, which seems to be a typical classroom one, or rather aimed at fluent illiterate speakers. The explanations are all in Guarani but our informal voluntary tutor recorded those very same explanations followed by their translations in Spanish. When you can't think of more convenient ways to learn a foreign language...As a matter of fact, this is a good tip if you have access to a tutor and only monolingual textbooks. That'd comprehensible input produced with less effort.

University of Oslo's well-known free online Norwegian course now has part 2.

All's well with Hebrew and Indonesian, just plugging along. I'm starting to find DLI Indo a bit hard on vocabulary but I can still follow the drills and the untranslated text without approaching burnout.

[Expugnator]

Finished Le Cerveau. Not my favorite, it has a lot in common with the Gendarme series but with much less class and humor. Now I'm moving on with my old archive from the dead site.

Georgian reading is a breeze now. And I haven't been using listening-reading for it. Which reminds me that I won't have patience with that for German for long. My reading skills are similar in both languages, as absurd as it seems.

I'm starting to actually having conversations in Esperanto and in Catalan, and I've studied these languages mostly from Clozemaster text input. I'm convinced that it actually works. Next one is Romanian. I believe whenever I get down to studying those languages properly through textbooks I won't be just learning to read a transparent language which I'll have to struggle to activate later; on the contrary: by doing this sustainable dabbling, which is turning out more sustainable than I had thought, I'm finally managing to keep productive and receptive skills moving a bit more harmoniously, thus putting an end to passive-only languages. I won't have trouble replicating that with Swedish, which I've started directly from text input (unlike Catalan, it's funny to think that basic Swedish was easier for me than basic Catalan) and with Romanian, from which I've started to notice considerable improvement ever since I switched to text input review mode.

This morning I was supposed to arrive here later and work overtime again, so I stayed at home a little longer. I took these few minutes and did more from the multiple-choice part from Clozemaster, which includes Hebrew and Indonesian - which I already do in any good day - but also Guarani, Catalan from Spanish (which is already mastered), Afrikaans. With this, only 5 multiple-choice language pairs were left for the afternoon, and that helped me a lot to focus on other activities.

Finished the good novel Las fuentes perdidas, by José Antonio Cotrina (thanks again tarvos). With this I also put an end to my Spanish-reading slot of 10 pages a day. It's really not necessary given that Spanish is mostly transparent for daily things and for literature there is some obscure vocabulary which would have been obscure in Portuguese as well, while I'm not looking it up anyway. So reading extensively in Spanish hasn't been the best of the exercises. I want to keep listening extensively. I'm about to finish the Argentinian podcasts and then I have other podcasts as well as audiobooks lined up. From my experience with Grand Bien Vous Fasse, I believe podcasts with multiple presenters will enhance my conversation perception, like intonation, how to intervene, how to give your point across and so on (the Argentinian podcast is mostly monolog apart from some very good interviews).

Still open to any suggestions of sci-fi natively in Spanish, though. I might keep this as an alternate 10-page fiction slot to pair up with my 20-page non-fiction slot for stronger languages.

Finished volume 2 of the neverending Croniche del mondo emmerso. I should read faster in Italian, but I get stuck at the orthography and the long words. No problem with listening, on the other hand.

And I'm really enjoying DLI Indonesian. I got used to the lessons's format and how it goes about the audio, but I still prefer to keep reading ahead and leave the audio on the background when I have to pause to do another stuff. That forces me to pay a bit more attention and I'm already starting to develop a feel for the language. It's not that hard with the drills, which are recorded slowly; the dialogs are at natural speed so I try to pay some attention even if when they are reached I'm already at the text.

Found time for a Guarani lesson. It's still weird to study from a monolingual textbook, but since I'm a false beginner I'm actually benefitting immensely from the on-the-go translations recorded by the native speaker.

At Grand Bien Vous Fasse they interviewed a child about fears. It's great to be able to understand without any problem. A child usually is much less structured language than the average podcast even.

I'm trying hard to keep my streak for Speakly.me at least for weekdays. It's a very detailed resource, but the fact that I get loads of reviews with listening-only (not cloze) sentences means it's hard to reach the minimum for the streak. I have to go over tenths of sentences before I get those typing ones that do count. The good news is that I'm really starting to get the hang of Estonian's complicated morphology and that is reflecting on my active skills.

Today I even had a listening exercise. These are actually great. Audio and translation. A typical L-R resource (though the texts aren't in parallel, you have to click to toggle one or the other) which is written in a very gentle, direct and accessible register.

I found a contact on Whatsapp, a Brazilian guy who learned Swedish and speaks not bad Norwegian. We chatted quite a bit in Norwegian towards the end of this extremely exhausting workday. He recommended me the book Viking Language 1 - Learn Old Norse, Runes and Icelandic Sagas, by Jesse L. Byock. Viking Language 2 is an Old Norse reader and it's been made fully available by the author.

So this is the end of report on this tiresome day, where I did get much done language-wise though.