Coldrainwater's Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Jan 14, 2023 2:59 am

What I have learned from reading about chemistry in the last few weeks can be summed up by saying that substances can be divided into roughly three flasks. They are either: more or less harmless, highly explosive or some variant of poisonous. That combined wisdom stemmed from the two books I just finished, Chemie by Charles Mortimer and Organische Chemie: Chemie-Basiswissen II by Hans Latscha et al.

I did the opposite of what a normal student would be required to do and it was a refreshing way to approach learning. I read both texts without engaging heavily in the exercises. My motivation was to gain a conceptual overview of the subjects to open up German learning in a number of fields for which the sciences are more or less Grundwissen. I majored in physics in undergraduate and haven't had a chemistry course in more than 20 years, so some of the learning was review but much of it was brand new. The first text by Mortimer may already be considered a classic in the field with a strong translation from Ulrich Müller. The hardest part of the book was the molecular orbital theory section which didn't make much sense until I read a comparative definition of it and its main rival:

The former is thus used quite extensively and the latter more sparingly.

The orgo text would have been a bear in a college class and I can see why what little exposure I had 20 years ago didn't lead to much learning. They hit you with a metric ton of chemical equations, many of which are quite complex and ultimately end up getting memorized rather than learned carefully. From reading, I gained a decent first-pass understanding of the concepts and terminology, but would currently be unable to work the spatial reaction problems without a lot of practice. To aide in the study, I found studyflix.de - organische chemie which provides good quality videos/visuals along with textual explanations. I found it by looking for something comparable to khanacademy but with German audio and a full set of courses. I have only watched about 30-40 short videos so far and have some catching up to do there.

What I liked most about the experience of both books is how they exercise the brain differently while being exposed to a foreign language at the same time. Chemistry has a very geospatial feel to me and I am constantly bouncing molecules about in my head. Instead of looking up unknown standard German vocabulary, I am looking up chemical terms and concepts. There are a lot of parallels to language and it has been fun learning. I have new alphabet to learn as well (the periodic table). My Greek letter identification is embarrassingly rusty. Lucky for me and anyone around me, I am not drawn to the lab aspects of chemistry and have no plans to mix anything that leads to sehr schnell ablaufende, stark exotherme Reaktionen.

Listening

It has mostly been about Damals und Heute for me lately. The presenters of this podcast have a subtle but witty sense of humor and they tend to bounce off of each other quite a lot. I enjoyed almost every episode but only had about 25 hours or so of content here. I made up for the difference by listening to Zeitblende. I enjoyed it as well even though there weren't many hours available and will probably take more from srf.ch/audio in the future.
15 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9391

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jan 14, 2023 3:24 pm

coldrainwater wrote:They hit you with a metric ton of chemical equations, many of which are quite complex and ultimately end up getting memorized rather than learned carefully.

Almost a perfect summing-up of what happens in a lot of courses.
6 x

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17566

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby Cavesa » Wed Jan 18, 2023 12:05 am

Thank you so much for the studyflix recommendtion! Exactly what I've wanted for some time!
3 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Mon Feb 06, 2023 8:54 am

Study

I seemed to learn/review material quite efficiently using studyflix.de, so I switched focus to it and watch/read (keine Übungen, also schnell) my way through several courses including:

The above represented most of my useful recent German study. Content overlapped somewhat with Neurobiologie and Physiologie, so that material went by quickly and my handling of it was rather perfunctory. I then decided to tackle Mechanik and made it smoothly through more than half the course before hitting a roadblock. I realized that I will need to relearn multivariate calculus and linear algebra before I will able to follow their video proofs in real-time. Too much comprehension would have been lost had I powered through, so I stopped to regroup.

Of the two paths, I decided to tackle linear algebra first and to date have read cover to cover Linear Algebra Theory Intuition and Code (auf Englisch) by Mike X Cohen. His approach and handling of the material was excellent. However, the electronic edition that I used botched the equations (he did say this would happen) and I managed to get lost right as I hit eigenvalues and eigenvectors, so I will pick those key components up from another resource. The topic is career-relevant, so my knowledge of it needs to be more than superficial. I haven't approached multivariate calculus yet, but did invest a couple of days reviewing single variable calculus using khanacademy. I have done a bit more than what I stated above academically, but in the interest of saving space, the material outlined should give a good feel of the path I am on. I still have the same tendency to veer off into math and physics that I did 20+ years ago when I studied them for the first time. Some things don't change.

Listening

Today I just finished listening to almost 50 hours of Bugtales - Die Abenteuer der Campbell-Ritter. The podcast is about biology, but I mainly ended up learning entirely about how chemistry works in the process. Namely, over the last several years and many episodes, the two podcast hosts fell in love and are now verheiratet. I have listened to many podcasts in my time spent on language learning and haven't heard that happen in real-time until now.

Vocabulary

Somewhat out of the blue I also picked up an old vice (dictionary reading) and gained some English vocabulary over the last week or so. It was mostly a case of eating too many words. I think I have most of it out of my system now but did manage to save a good long list for SRS. I spent a short while on wordsmith.org which is likely what triggered the whole thing. Then I found and read cover to cover, The Hutchinson Dictionary of Difficult Words. I didn't realize until now that it was written by John Ayto, the author of an English etymology text that I have on my virtual bookshelf to read one day. I like his etymology explanations and tend to get on well with the author overall (he is thorough but relatable).
10 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Mon Feb 20, 2023 10:53 pm

I have been busy doing a lot with German and other academic learning, but in deference to the length of the post, I am only commenting on grammar-specific topics.

Cheatsheet Grammatik
I went on a new grammar foray (that is still ongoing). It started with an underwhelming review of my QuickStudy German Grammar. The sheets looked cryptic and thinking I had forgotten everything I promptly overreacted and launched a full study initiative. In retrospect, rather than completely having forgotten it all, it is my conclusion that they made the laminate sheets too compact in a way that was tough for me to unravel after a study pause and I would prefer either to make my own (best) or cobble them together from the numerous online resources that match my taste. Their QuickStudy verb sheet was actually of more help.

Video Grammatik
For video review, YourGermanTeacher started me off on the right track. I was impressed with the logical clarity of instruction and felt that both presenters understood where learners often experience pain or lack awareness. This isn't the first go-round for either Luzi or Johannes. It is a beginner-oriented channel and conveniently is of a type where I could effectively absorb the material while exercising with intermittent concentration and visualization. I watched the full complement of their currently available videos and then followed up by doing the same with the material available from studyflix - Deutsch Grammatik. YourGermanTeacher was the better and more memorable of the two for me, but both were helpful.

Lehrbuch Grammatik
By that time I had my fill of video instruction and moved on to a thorough re-reading of Deutsch Grammatik 2.0. Even the second time around, it is still my favourite German language grammar reference, mainly because the author is thorough enough to include material that isn't mentioned in other sources and by design caters to students who are intent on advanced study. For example, Ulrich gave a second set of common Akkusitiv and Dativ Präpositionen and doesn't shy away from acknowledging the still-prevalent use of the Genitiv. Verb handling is at the forefront and addressed in full. Fair warning, the book is very list, table and example heavy, but pleasantly more succinct than verbose with commentary.

Der Die Das - App

Taking it part by part, I recently started drilling gender more extensively since I am not quite satisfied with a roughly 80% success rate in guessing the gender of a given noun. The rest of my grammar skills aren't strong enough to cope with and abide by that level of cluelessness. The most effective app I have found to drill the basics here is this Der Die Das Android App. When you miss a major rule-based decision (shameful), it will literally drop you a hint so you know not to do it again and show you which rule you broke. I have been training for a few days now with good overall success in that the gender is very much sticking and it is helping to rewire words I had previously misidentified. I am able to recognize and fit new terms into the rule buckets I already have, expanding their applicability. The game I play with myself is to try for 100 consecutively correct terms before missing one. I consider it good when I can manage 50 or more. I am still pretty new to it so I hope they use a decent-sized dictionary to keep it interesting. Time will tell.

Der Die Das Tips (for beginners)

For anyone just starting out in German who is reading this, a few quick tips on gender identification (not comprehensive). Part of my thought process as I make a decision given a term to identify goes like this: The feminine rules are easiest to learn and most reliable, so I learned them first, then picked up the major rules for Maskulin and Neuter. Also, the feminine exceptions to the rules are fewer and further between in my experience and the feminine endings easier to recognize and far more reliable. Thus if I do have to guess, it is between Maskulin and Neuter, giving me much better initial odds. On a guess, I first always look at Maskulin. Maskulin professions or people come up so often that I do a quick mental check for that first. I can then identify a fair number of terms from having worked with them over the last three years and have a reliable sense of their gender. Quite a few tricky ones are still left over, unfortunately. Definitely enough to throw me off in a writing exercise. The application mentioned is what I am using for all the rest. In my mind, what it accomplishes is making the exceptions themselves interesting enough and easy enough to encode. Like many others, a simple carrot-and-stick approach with a counter is often enough for me to go head over heels for words.

DeepL
For English and German only, DeepL launch a beta of their writing tool, DeepL.com/write. I haven't used it in earnest yet but wanted to share it in case anyone hasn't seen it and would like to try it. It might actually be enough to tip the balance and get me to construct some sentences on my own. After a brief look, what I like most about it is that it seems to give multiple alternative sentence structures free of charge. I don't know the competition well enough to see if the others implement those alternatively as cleanly.
11 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Tue Feb 28, 2023 7:52 am

Deutsch Trainer
I have emerged on the better side of Deutsch Trainer Pro's Starke Verben SRS learning set. It was a case of promised and delivered on their part and I am content with my progress thus far. It took me about a week to get through and ahead of the 2800+ cards they had outlined for me. I thought about rolling my own strong verb conjugator but at the time I hadn't located a suitable grammarbase to download. I found one modest offering on GitHub here: wanderingstan top-german-verbs.csv, kindly formatted and ready for me to import. I saved it for later ingestion. Incidentally, chat.openai.com didn't fair well here and produced outdated/dead links upon request, but made a good show of effort in trying to help me find an acceptable database.

Dict.cc - Wordlist Upgrade
Using my old word database freely available in text format from dict.cc - Vokabeldatenbank and a fair amount of determination, I created another upgraded never-ending Anki wordlist in flashcard format to replace my old list. As an improvement, I excluded most of the Fachgebiete and specialized domain terminology that cluttered my initial list. This was the right way to filter and now after a little work, I have a cleaner list that I can enjoy. As an additional improvement, I grouped definitions with Anki-breaks in between each such that each card now has a distinct German term from dict.cc on the front with multiple definitions on the back side and gender information appended as the final line. The last Der, Die, Das app had too small of a dictionary, so I will let my wordlist do double duty in that respect. It is randomized so what I get shouldn't be without surprises. I started by uploading the first 100k terms to Anki and have over 500k in total. Should I ever exhaust the first upload, I can replace it up to about four times.

Hörbuch
Just yesterday, I finished listening to Biest (Solveigh-Lang-Reihe 2) by Jenk Saborowski. The narration was good and the storyline was clean and not difficult to follow. Not a slog for me and it held my interest well considering it had competition from other audiobooks, Podcasts and Studyflix material. I am no expert on Krimis, but there is certainly no lack of options for that German scene.

Duolingo
I have been using the desktop version and have been jumping units in my downtime. So far I am on unit 28 and it appears they may be starting to address some relevant grammar material. I have also completed the first unit of Latin. Duolingo overall may be lowest on the totem pole when it comes to producing results, but it does get me output practice. You can move pretty fast if you go keyboard only while liberally smashing the enter key to go between screens.
11 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:50 pm

Incoming: Wall of text.

Englischer Wortschatz
As fallout from my most recent vocabulary binge, I had a backlog of around 1000 obscure English words that needed loading in memory. So I commenced armed with personal interest and a list of words each with a concise but often inadequate definition. Initially, you could say forgetting was the word of the day. To get past this recurring problem, this time I chose to rely almost entirely on etymologies found via wordsense.eu, which I believe uses en.wiktionary.org as its port of call. The result was positive in that I picked up the vocabulary faster and more reliably than usual. It appears I seem to retain and recall word origins with lower comparative effort. This has happened to me before. Pictures and context sentences were both less effective given this particular word list.

In mathematics at least, I often notice a sharp distinction in problem-solving approaches and end up making a choice between algebraic vs. non-algebraic (usually geometric) methods when building up an understanding of a new mathematical concept. I tend to prefer algebraic approaches strongly and I seem to carry the preference forward to vocabulary learning also, at least insofar as derivation is concerned. The use of etymology linked to word meanings is thus very appealing. It also makes a very strong web of association that doesn't seem to grow stale.

Altgriechisch
Given that about half the words that I researched above made a beeline to Ancient Greek, I did the most natural thing and set about learning the ancient script well enough to work with the etymologies I encountered. While I was at it, I created a space for Ancient Greek and Latin word lists. Alea iacta est, I suppose. I quite enjoy using the Ancient Greek script and seeing the words come to life in a script that is still only partially familiar is quite rewarding and hopefully memorable as well.

Deutsche Hörbücher und Hörspiele
I made my way through two audiobooks and a Hörspiele, all referenced below. The Matthew Corbett book was the first of a longer series and the audiobook comes in two parts, totalling about 30 hours of listening. There is nothing like a price tag to make a miser of me, so I just listened to Band I. It was the most satisfying of the three and most like a 'real novel'. Curiosity was a primary theme and it definitely fits in the historical Krimi section by my judgement. Die Nacht was written with the obvious intent of serving as the script for a future movie. Plenty of action but light on the literature side. I ended up really liking the Barnaby Grimes story, enough to seek out some similar short Hörspiele for future entertainment purposes. There is decent availability in that market and the narration is variable in quality but competitive with audiobooks.

Deutsche Grammatik
The combined work I have done with the Github verblist and Deutsch Trainer Pro's Starke Verben really enhanced my listening experience of the audiobooks mentioned above. I didn't expect it to have such a strong positive influence on my reading. The books were of standard difficulty and the verbs I had on my list seemed to make an appearance in every other sentence, so I had ample time to analyze the grammar while I was listening. I remember that being able to do that with Spanish at an appropriate juncture really helped as well. As I am listening I see the words written out in my mind and can also check spelling and conjugation. The more vivid those images and structures, the better.

I also spent about a day briefly reading over Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik. It is quite like many other academic texts I have read. Namely, the first chapter is denser than you would expect, covering topics that I would probably put at the end of the book. Based on a couple of reviews that placement lost at least some of its readership. Much of the information I found useful was in the reference section at the very end. Overall, the rest of the text was professional, thorough and pretty good for digging into grammatical nuance.

I also reactivated my lingolia membership since it appears to be drill season for grammar. I have covered about 1.5 sections lazily and the results have been middling so far. I like the platform and examples though and it is instructive to see that I get more out of it now that I have slightly better starting skill in the grammar world. Notably, I am no longer gender confused and have stark verben, so to speak.

Studyflix
Studyflix - Elektrizitätslehre

I watched and listened to all the short videos over Elektrotechnik offered by Studyflix, using them mainly to bolster Allgemeinwissen since I don't have any immediate plans to pursue study in that area. Their mention of the Faradayscher Käfig brought back memories and of course an eerie feeling of safety that I still don't fully trust.

I have also written plenty to conclude this update.
11 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Apr 09, 2023 7:23 am

Es liegt in der Natur des flüchtigen Erdenbewohners, daß er das Glück in der unbekannten Weite sucht. - Alexander von Humboldt. In this case, Humboldt did the travelling and I read about it in four volumes starting with Reise in die Aequinoctial-Gegenden des neuen Continents (translated by Hermann Hauff). I managed to get a visual of an 1816 French copy here. His trip lasted from 1799 to 1804 roughly and he was accompanied by quite an excellent travel partner in Aimé Bonpland. The two sailed in style employing a Corvette named Pizarro to kick off the journey. He left loaded with instruments, money and helpful permissions and somehow managed to come back years later in one piece, after the adventure of a lifetime. You can follow the general path of his trip by examining this Reisekarte. He often travelled to areas where coin meant little and spent the remainder of his fortune publishing his books in later years.

The 1150+ pages that I read covered approximately a third of his voyage. I am quite partial to adventure stories and equally partial to scientific discovery, so this one is a favourite in multiple categories for me. The style of writing was unique in that he embedded essays on a wide range of topics to accompany the story as he told it from his personal Tagebuch. The approach allows the reader to see how science unfolds. There are far worse teaching methods out there. It is lucky that he made it through the trip as the risks he took were numerous and quite real. He even managed to accidentally don a poison-soaked stocking and live to tell about it. Thankfully that wasn't an everyday occurrence. I look forward to reading more from Humboldt at a later date. His Kosmos looks particularly appealing.

From a language standpoint, reading Humboldt was a pleasure. My Spanish came in very handy and most of his documented travels in the book I read happened along the Orinoco in the general vicinity of Venezuela (he got around). It was nice to have such a heavy amount of Spanish included along with a genuine effort to use names associated with the indigenous tribes of South America. Humboldt himself was fluent in at least English, Spanish, French and German and used Latin extensively. He likely knew other languages, perhaps many. In the book, heights (he had quite the penchant for volcanos and mountains) were presented in Toisen and monetary amounts were in Piaster. Most of his river travel was done via Pirogue.

Before tackling Humboldt, I read two philosophy texts, namely: Zur Genealogie der Moral von Friedrich Nietzsche and
Philosophische Untersuchungen von Ludwig Wittgenstein. I needed a translation to help get through Nietzsche and will likely examine more of his works specifically for the reading challenge that they offer.

Wittgenstein's book was presented as a collection of notes and I think I would have enjoyed meeting him. I would like to devote more time to reading about his life. The embedded humour was great but I felt I had covered much of the example subject matter that he addressed in other areas more effectively and thus I didn't find the content that interesting.

Wittgenstein showed unparalleled depth and admirable focus in his presentation of philosophy:
Wittgenstein wrote:My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

My copy happened to be a bilingual parallel text with near-perfect column alignment and the translator, G.E.M Anscombe was quite a well-known philosopher in her own right. As far as philosophy goes, Philosophische Untersuchungen is manageable and was a fairly easy read.

I will give Nietzsche a more thorough review after I have experienced more of his writing. In the midst of all my reading, I have kept up listening, mainly to philosophy audiobooks interspersed with occasional short stories. Grammar study seems to have vanished from my routine. If I hadn't documented how involved I was with it, I might not remember where to pick back up with it the next time the bug strikes me.
11 x

User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3631

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby luke » Sun Apr 09, 2023 9:28 am

Very interesting your reference to von Humboldt and that particular book. It fleshes out a bit more this passage from Cien años de soledad where Melquiades is mumbling in the silver shop with Aureliano:
Humboldt.png
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
5 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9391

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby Le Baron » Sun Apr 09, 2023 12:44 pm

I'm very familiar with Wittgenstein's book, but can't claim to have read it in German. I applaud you. I still have the English first edition I bought when studying the text (and Kripke's book in relation to 'private language' derived from it). Wittgenstein may be the most important philosopher of the 20th century.

I'm always impressed and marvel at the sorts of books you tackle in a TL.
3 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests