SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

[Cèid Donn]

Short digression about video games:

Today, the game dev from Stardew Valley, Eric Barone, aka ConcernedApe, posted patch notes on Steam and commented that the game, which is 5 years old, recently had its highest number of players playing it at the same time on Steam, some 95k-plus players. I have to confess I was very likely one of those players.

In other gaming news, the 7-time World Tetris champion, Jonas Neubauer passed away today from what those close to him have described as a sudden medical emergency. He was considered an exemplar member of the competitive gaming community, widely respected and loved. Very sad.

Ok, now to languages:

I have been struggling with brain fog today, likely due to multiple sources of stress. It made me cut short my OC writing and I also decided not to try to do any dictation like I had hoped to do today.

But I did manage to do all my reviews for Dutch 1 and 2 on Memrise, which were a lot since I haven't touched the Dutch courses there since Christmas, and I reviewed about 300 mastered sentences in the Dutch from German course on Clozemaster, as well as reviewed chapter 1-6 in Colloquial Dutch 1. I floundered quite a bit on recalling vocabulary, which I can partly blame on the brain fog, but also I almost never have very good recall when I'm still well under the intermediate threshold with a language, so that's normal for me. My pronunciation seems to have improved, although that's probably just a highly subjective impression due to having lower expectations for myself than compared to when I was doing the 6WC.

And I found some Belter stuff on You Tube late last night.

There are several interview with Belter Creole's main creator, Nick Farmer, but this is probably the most concise and entertaining one, that goes into some of the thinking behind the conlang:



This is a video of a fan thanking the people who work on The Expanse behind the scenes--he has to rely on English for some specialized concepts about making a TV show because there hasn't been a lot of need for them to create Belter words for such things so far (also the video is 2 years old and belter has been a ongoing WIP as the TV show and book series develops).



Speaking of Belter, these are my new notebooks I got with my Christmas money, the striped one I'm using for my Belter notes. Both are 4-subject, and I haven't decide what else to use them for. (The designs may look a bit fuzzy because they're printed on transparent plastic and my old tablet's mediocre camera can't handle how that plays with the light--they're actually really clear and pretty.)



I also got more book darts, although I haven't been able to get the new container open yet. I read some complaints about this in recent reviews on Amazon, but I had no idea it would be this bad. The container on the right is my old one, and it's got spots of corrosion because I've had it forever--I have been ordering smaller amounts to refill it from time to time. The three darts there are to show the different colors they come in (if you get the mixed container).



OC progress

I only wrote a little over 500 words in French today. I continued with the theme of the musical instruments I own, and talked a little more in depth about the lap dulcimer (also called an Appalachian or mountain dulcimer) that I got many years ago at the big Renaissance fair north of Houston.

SC progress

Last night, I finished chapter 5 in Metro 2033 in all three languages! I'm not feeling up to working on that tonight so I'm going to watch something on Netflix instead.

[Cèid Donn]

I didn't do any work for my OC today. I overslept, and then had to do an errand for mom before lunch time. My afternoon was taken up by my making chicken fajitas for dinner, and then after dinner I had to go to Office Depot to pick up the Frixion pens I ordered. The last involved me going to a big shopping center area on my side of town, and I am pleased to inform everyone that El Paso drivers are as every bit as disrespectful towards pedestrians using crosswalks and simply trying to get to and from a store as they ever were. The pandemic may have changed a lot about the world, but not this!

Suffice to say, today wasn't an excessively productive day regarding studying. I read a couple short stories for my SC and then listened to both of the Dutch volumes of the Earworms series and reviewed a couple more chapters in Colloquial Dutch 1. I also wrote out some Breton sentences and translated them into French mostly just to try out my new pens. As for this evening, I still need to do my Clozemaster and Memrise and I will probably watch something for my SC.

SC progress

Last night I watch 2 episodes of Нюхач, plus I rewatched the first episode of Эпидемия, so I've added those times to my Russian SC bar below.

Germanic : 1285 / 9000 : 148 / 5000
Russian : 1373 / 4500 : 0 / 2500

The two Gaelic short stories I read today were from Caogad san Fhàsach. Tomorrow I should be less busy with other things and I hope to work on my Metro 2033 parallel reading.

[Cèid Donn]

I signed up for the Polyglot fitness challenge and that's open more progress bar to put somewhere, so I'm moving all my SC progress bars back to my log. The character limit for user signatures is fighting me and I capitulate.

I had a very productive day. I got up at my usual time and got a fair amount of Clozemaster work done with Romance languages and read several short news articles in French and in Indonesian, about COVID news from various countries and the Sriwijaya Air airplane crash. After that, I did my OC work and SC reading for the day. After lunch I did a little more Dutch review of Memrise, and now I feel ready to get started with Colloquial Dutch 2. I also watched the 3rd episode of El Cid on Amazon, having watched the first 2 last night, plus several You Tube videos on Spanish grammar, after which I made notes in my new notebook with my new pen.

Reading news stories this morning reminded me that I have yet to find a spot in my weekly study plans for Indonesian. I'm not doing a lot with Indonesian right now--I read stuff online and work on it on Clozemaster and Memrise. I guess that'll have to be enough for now until I settle on where I want to go with it. Honestly, I'm more motivated with Hawaiian and Tagalog right now.

As for the Polyglot Fitness challenge:

250 days of:

• 20 minutes (or more) of either aerobic exercise, strength training, or both
• 20 minutes (or more) of verb conjugation practice

So basically 5 days a week, I will try to get both of these done. I even ordered 100 copies of a blank conjugation practice sheet (double-sided) because Office Depot is offering 40% off their printing services at the moment, making it a much better bargain than printing them out on my ink-inefficient printer. I got the blank sheet .pdf here, from The Spanish Dude's website, who very sagely said in his video about conjugation practice regarding using a prepared sheet like this: "The less annoying something is to do, the more likely you are to do." And I definitely agree.

I had been looking for a way to get myself to do conjugation practice for a number of my languages on a regular basis, and this challenge seemed like a nice way to get myself to commit. I talked a bit about what I want to do for my fitness in the PFC thread, but with conjugation, I want to make sheets for a number of verbs in French, Spanish, German and Russian, and use those sheets for oral drills.

OC progress

I did 23 minutes of speaking Irish today. First I read out loud the sentences I composed the other day, then I recited from memory the Irish words for all the musical instruments and other music-related vocabulary that I wrote about, and then talked spontaneously for a bit.

SC progress

I read half of chapter 6 of Metro 2033 in all 3 languages. I wish I could say the Russian is getting easier but it's not. The Spanish is, though. I've read the German version once before, for the book club here, so that's not bad at all, especially since I have the Kindle version and I made plenty of notes when I read it the first time.

Last night I started watching El Cid, and I spend the 1st episode being a little bewildered and had to spend a bit of time looking up Ferdinand the Great and all his family drama, of which there is a lot by the way, and the Battle of Atapuerca. In this series, that is the battle is where El Cid lost his father, which, as far as I can tell, is not a verified historical fact. This is what is very confusing for me, and why I ended up learning more about medieval Iberian history last night than I ever had learned in all my life before, simply because I know virtually nothing about El Cid and I wanted to understand what in the series is considered to be historical fact (or likely to be) and what's embellishment for the story. I mean, if you want to know about horses in Iberia at that time, I could tell you all about the Moors and their Arab and Berber horses and the medieval warhorses that would become breeds like the Andalusian and the Friesian, but if it's about royal history, I'm a complete novice.

Anyhow, once I passed my little Medieval Spanish Royalty According to Wikipedia Crash Course, I was really enjoying the series. Pity it only has 5 episodes and it's unclear if there'll be a 2nd season.

French : 2153 / 18000 : 1666 / 10000
Spanish : 1524 / 18000 : 1366 / 10000
Celtic : 2773 / 18000 : 1011 / 10000

Germanic : 1285 / 9000 : 148 / 5000
Russian : 1373 / 4500 : 0 / 2500

[Cèid Donn]

I didn't do anything with my rotating languages yesterday besides listen to the Dutch Earworms again (both volumes). I personally like the whole Earworms series, it's really nice for days you don't feel up to anything hard or mentally taxing. But I don't know what happened with it. It appears the whole project is dead and there won't be any new ones, which is unfortunate. With the French ones, my favorite by far is the 3rd volume, and they had promised a 3rd volume for all their languages but they only managed to release a 3rd volume for a few of them. I would really love the 3rd volume for Russian, but since it's been years since they released a new volume, I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen.

Today I plan to work on Hawaiian until dinner. I need to finish Learn Hawaiian at Home. There's only 7 chapters but each chapter has a lot of practice and drills to do, and I probably need to review everything I've done so far at this point before doing the last 2 chapters. After dinner I have to watch the new episode of The Expanse.

Fitness challenge

Update: I'm sore!

I'm at the age where letting yourself become a pandemic couch potato for months comes with real consequences. At least waking up sore gives me incentive to do some stretching and a bit of light aerobic exercise first thing in the morning, to work out the stiffness. That wasn't the plan but it's working!

I got my blank conjugation sheets and have done traer and llevar for Spanish, and then today, I did vouloir for French, which is an easy one, I know, but still, good practice.

OC progress

I was suppose to do French speaking yesterday but I really wasn't in the mood, so I wrote in French instead. I wrote a little over 800 words, about what I've learned about El Cid since I started watching the Spanish series on Amazon Prime. I didn't get to El Cid's famous warhorse--I'll write about that for my next writing day.

I tried to do some French speaking today but it just wasn't happening. Today's one of those days where I just don't feel very verbal, even in English. I did 6 minutes and then decided to stop torturing myself.

SC progress

I watched the last episode of El Cid last night and I was so engrossed, I forgot to take my mom her bedtime cup of tea. She's been giving me a hard time about that all day today. Anyhow, Amazon needs to renew this series already. They can't leave us hanging like this. All this devilish court intrigue and Ruy isn't even a knight yet!

By the way, I did find the series, although short, really good practice for listening to Castilian Spanish. You know, when there was dialogue, in between the battle scenes and the sexy time. No, seriously, there's really a fair about of dialogue in this. Good for practice.

I was a bit short for time yesterday so instead of my Metro 2033 reading I just read about 100 pages of Corto Maltese, which I hope to finish this weekend, and then read a Gaelic short story from Caogad san Fhàsach.

French Films : 2153 / 18000 Books : 1666 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1690 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 2773 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1285 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1373 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500

[Cèid Donn]

I got some bad news this afternoon and while it's not a tragedy, it did throw me into a funk for the rest of the day. I ended up playing Stardew Valley and watched non-language related videos on You Tube. I also found a Twitter account that tweets in Lang Belta. I could understand a portion of the words but I still have so much to learn.

Yesterday I did more research into the phonology of Hawaiian and related languages like Maori. I'm quite fascinated by the allophonic variations in Hawaiian (k~t, w~v, l~r) that aren't really represented well in the standardized orthography. Hawaiian's orthography, as far as I know, was originally created by missionaries rather than by native speakers. Anyhow, in Standard Hawaiian the taro root (English gets this word from Maori) is spelled kalo, but due to allophonic variations that have been historically present in Hawaiian, you could pronounce it taro and still be technically correct, it seems. I do not know to what extent speakers today employ these variations or how--in the audio for Learn Hawaiian at Home, I have heard w~v and to a lesser extent l~r, but if those speakers are using the k~t variation, my ear is missing it. But where I do hear it, I try to imitate it.

Fitness challenge

I was a lot less sore this morning, which is good. It tells me I haven't injured anything. I still did my exercising first thing this morning, although I will likely switch the time around.

My verb for today's conjugation practice was брать. The sheet I have was made with Spanish conjugation in mind so I have to make it work for Russian, but it's OK. I have completely gotten out of practice using Russian cursive so everything is in bad block lettering. Oh well.

OC progress

Nothing today, for reasons mentioned above.

SC progress

I did almost 3 hours of parallel reading with Metro 2033 and got to chapter 7. And I watched 3 episodes of Ros na Rún right after lunch.

French Films : 2153 / 18000 Books : 1666 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1690 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 2842 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1285 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1373 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500

[Caromarlyse]

I have completely gotten out of practice using Russian cursive so everything is in bad block lettering. Oh well.

I can write fine in Russian cursive (in fact I've become so comfortable that it's starting to become messy like my Latin alphabet handwriting is), but I find it harder to read back than block letters (or typed) so I sometimes write in block lettering still if I want something to revise from. But I suppose I won't improve if I keep doing this!

[Cèid Donn]

I have completely gotten out of practice using Russian cursive so everything is in bad block lettering. Oh well.

I can write fine in Russian cursive (in fact I've become so comfortable that it's starting to become messy like my Latin alphabet handwriting is), but I find it harder to read back than block letters (or typed) so I sometimes write in block lettering still if I want something to revise from. But I suppose I won't improve if I keep doing this!

Yeah, I have trouble reading my own Russian cursive too. I'm one of those few Russian learners who had a hard time learning the Russian Cyrillic alphabet in its printed form when I started learning Russian, and then the cursive throws a couple of extra hurdles with how some letters, like how д (lower case) and т, are written in cursive, plus a few I just never managed to learn to do well, like ж and я. So I ended up with my own personal mix of cursive and block lettering, which I have since learned isn't uncommon at all. So I guess I'm not alone there. But I fall back into using all block letters, which is slow but at least it forces me to write more neatly, if I don't practice it regularly, which I haven't for about a month.

If the cursive is really neat and clean, like in this video, I can usually get by reading it with a few moments of reminding myself that this letter is suppose to be X or Y in the block script, but sometimes I see cursive in TV shows that I don't know how anyone can read it! In this video around 2:35 she mentions how Russian doctors are notorious for bad handwriting, and in one scene in Нюхач they show the investigator going through medical files and the handwriting is just horrible. So I wonder if that was a little joke for their Russian viewers.

[Caromarlyse]

Interesting to learn that my English handwriting has followed the same track as described for Russians' handwriting: learn how to write according to the rules at school, grow up, stop joining letters up...!

[Cèid Donn]

Yesterday was a rather unproductive day for my languages studies. I had to do some errands and house cleaning, and I just didn't feel up to much else, so I skipped the day with all my big challenges save for watching some stuff for my French SC in the evening.

This morning after exercising, I did some journaling with Hawaiian and focused a bit on Maori and Tagalog on Clozemaster and Memrise, and after that I did a French dictation and then my French OC. By the afternoon I was feeling pretty run down and I mostly just napped. As for tonight, it's another Friday night where my neighbor has gone out and left her beagle outside, so it's barking and baying like a lonely beagle would, and the window in my room faces her house, so it's just not something I can tune out. I will have to move to the TV room and work on my tablet and watch some stuff on the TV for the rest of the evening--it's going to be a "whatever I can get done" night.

Anyhow, here's my PSA on owning beagles: please don't leave them alone for long stretches of time unless you are actively trying to get the entire neighborhood to hate you.

Fitness challenge

Nothing yesterday specifically for this challenge, although given the amount of errands and house cleaning I did, I certainly got plenty of physical activity for the day. It was nice though that yesterday I felt a little more limber--this is of course the obvious result of making the minimum effort to exercise, but for the sake of maintaining my motivation for this challenge, I'm going make note of that here.

Today I did my exercises in the morning and the conjugation practice this afternoon after my nap. Today's verb was venir (Spanish).

OC progress

Nothing yesterday but today I did 16 minutes of French speaking where I mostly was reading aloud.

I have been trying to do some dictation after I do my OC and that wasn't working out. I tried doing dictation before doing my OC work and found that transition much easier, perhaps because doing dictation (I'm using the website Une dictée par jour for French dictation) is a more structured activity.

SC progress

I haven't done any reading either yesterday or today. Last night, I was planning on watching more of Selena with Spanish audio on Netflix, but when I opened Netflix, I noticed that a new French series, Lupin, was ranked #2 on Netflix for the day in the US, and that really surprised me because I don't think I've ever seen a French language series ranked that high here. So I had to check it out and I really enjoyed the first 2 episodes. I have often said that I generally don't like a lot of French TV, but this really strikes me as something quite different, in a very good way, than the usual French fare I've seen. Sadly, another short 5-epsiode series. What is with that? Is this because of the pandemic or is this a general trend in the TV industry for series made for streaming platforms?

French Films : 2256 / 18000 Books : 1666 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1690 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 2842 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1285 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1373 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500

[DaveAgain]

Sadly, another short 5-epsiode series. What is with that? Is this because of the pandemic or is this a general trend in the TV industry for series made for streaming platforms?

I've watched a number of French series via a UK broadcaster, 6-8 episode mini-series seems to be the most common format they offer. One thing about Engrenages that's surprised me is that most of the seasons are 12 episodes, rather than 6-8.

One article I read recently mentioned that CANAL requires each season of a new or re-newed series to be self-contained, insisting that the audience not need any knowledge from earlier seasons. That might perhaps make repeats easier for broadcasters, so that they don't have to show seasons in sequence, but can broadcast them in whatever order is convenient. Perhaps fewer episodes per season are also intended to assist broadcasters' scheduling requirements?