Jeff's language log

[jeff_lindqvist]

(Final) Summary of 2017

1. Swedish - 104,5 hours
2. English - 104,5 hours
3. Cantonese - 35 hours
4. Russian - 34,75 hours
5. Chinese - 33,25 hours
6. Czech - 27,75 hours
7. German - 25,75 hours
8. Portuguese - 18,5 hours
9. Esperanto - 13 hours
10. Italian - 8,75 hours
11. Scottish Gaelic - 5 hours
12. Irish Gaelic - 5 hours
13. Slovak - 4,25 hours
14. Finnish - 2,5 hours
15. French - 2 hours
16. Hindi Urdu - 1 hours
17. Norwegian Bokmål - 0,75 hours

I'm not surprised that Swedish and English got the highest positions. I read in both every day. The other high numbers (well, everything is relative) are related to the study (Cantonese, Czech), literature (Russian, German), semi-intense grammar study (Chinese, Portuguese, Esperanto) and the rest, well, wild ideas that lasted one month (or shorter). One of the languages which I in fact use (!) now and then isn't even on the list. It's Spanish.

Books in 2017

150 in total: 85 in Swedish, 30 in English, 21 children's books in Portuguese, 6 in German (including a couple of audiobooks), 3 in Russian, 1 in Norwegian (about Norwegian as a neighbouring language), 1 audiobook in French and finally I worked through 2 textbooks in Chinese and one phrasebook for Slovak. Still, even if I don't count the audiobooks, the children's books, the textbooks or the phrasebook, the number is... 121.

Achievements?
In one way, I'm shocked how little I've used these languages, and how little I've improved. Compared to the polyglots I've met during the years, I'm nobody. On the other hand, I'm not sure I had improved more if I just had focused on a few languages. (The world is full of people who study just one and still don't get anywhere.)

Anyway, now it's a new year! I have some realistic ideas and some wild ones.

---

Did you fall asleep yet?

[languist]

Definitely haven't fallen asleep! This is inspiring! You seem to have achieved so much (and 150 books... wow!!), so it's surprising that you feel like you've hardly made any progress. You've done more work in a year than I've probably done - ever! So forgive me if this is a silly question, as I'm just new to the forum, but is it the case that you've really improved so little after 100+ hours of studying, or is it that you hold yourself to a very high standard and had set yourself a really ambitious goal which you don't feel you've met? Either way, looking forward to tracking your efforts in the new year, wow :o

[Ogrim]

150 books - that is about half a book a day every day of the year! If an average book has some 200 pages, you've managed to read some 30.000 pages last year . That is very very impressive, even if many of them are in your native language. Chapeau!

[smallwhite]

(Final) Summary of 2017

1. Swedish - 104,5 hours
2. English - 104,5 hours
3. Cantonese - 35 hours
4. Russian - 34,75 hours

好開心見倒廣東話排第三，雖然只係贏個馬鼻～加油！

[jeff_lindqvist]

2018 - Summary of week 1

Time for a late update. The year started as planned. It was a short work week, so I was able to devote up to two hours to many of my languages.

CS: Daily podcast lessons and a lot of new Anki cards. The current path has fairly long lessons (slightly shorter than 15 minutes), but copy-pasting the sentences is quick. I don't have time to/want to spend a lot more time than a quarter of an hour.

DE: Ich habe das Hörbuch zugehört, aber ich finde es so leicht, einzuschlafen wenn ich nicht vollig konzentriert bin. Vor langer Zeit habe ich über atavistische Eigenschafte gelesen, und das Einschlafen könnte einer von ihnen sein. Wieso? Sie nennen es "Opossum spielen", oder mit anderen Worten - wenn man tot spielt. Es gibt jedoch keine Bedrohung zu Hause...

ES: Systematiker y otros miembros habían escrito sobre Assimil. Me decidí pasar un tiempo con mis cursos. Leí algunas lecciones en voz alta y traduje otras del inglés.

FR: (Comme mentionné ci-dessus.) Je n'étudie pas beaucoup le français - l'année dernière, je ne l'ai parlée qu'une seule fois!, Cependant, parce que j'ai commencé à revoir mon cours d'espagnol, pourquoi pas le français aussi?

RU: I also decided to pick up where I left off in Russian in Exercises. (Notice a pattern?) It was nearly a year ago, and as usual when there's something you don't do regularly, you lose flow and momentum. Still, a few sessions of Genitive exercises (yikes), things got easier and easier (everything's relative...) and eventually I was ready for the Instrumental case. I picked up a not-so-useful sentence during a chit-chat in the grocery store: Какое приятное похмелье.

YUE: Same story as Czech. Daily podcasts. A lot of words. I can usually squeeze in two lessons in 15 minutes.

ZH: Similar Assimil story as some languages above. Read, rinse, repeat.

Unexpected language at work:
A lady noticed that I was speaking (about) Chinese with another fellow, so all of a sudden, she said 恭喜發財, and when I said that it sounded Cantonese (well, it was) she confirmed that - "Yeah, I've only worked with people from Hong Kong.". How about that.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2018 - Summary of week 2

Another late update. I'm generally able to squeeze in a good hour or two per day (so far).

CS: Same approach as last week. I usually do one lesson per day (they last between 10 and 15 minutes, so that's perfect). Progress? Who knows. I listen to the lesson once, and then review the copy-pasted cards whenever they appear. I have thought of changing my approach.

DE: Kein Hörbuch diese Woche. Stattdessen, habe ich Assimil wiedergeholt. (Der gleiche Ansatz wie die anderen Sprachen letzte Woche; lesen, (manchmal) übersetzen und/oder vergleichen, einige Erklärungen und Beispiele gründlicher studieren.)

ES: Esta semana escuché la mayoría de las lecciones (no todas). En el trabajo, me encuentro con hispanohablantes casi todos los días. Voy a leer algo la próxima semana.

FR: Cette semaine, j'ai écouté les audio-leçons. Compte tenu du peu de français que j'ai étudié ces dernières années, je comprends encore à peu près. Je voudrais lire quelque chose en français, mais quoi?

RU: This week I took a break from the grammar book and listened to Echo Moskvy instead. My Russian comprehension isn't the best. I need more of this.

YUE: More podcasts. A lot of the time is spent on repeating sentences (with minor changes) a number of times and then a lot of teaching language (it made me think of the old HTLAL posts where Arguelles defended the Assimil method because it contained more solid audio as opposed to FSI). Anyway, I've decided to spend some more time on these basic lessons. For the time being, I just listen once, and add the material to Anki. I'd rather have shorter lessons, preferably a dialogue (without teaching language). I'm sure there are some...

ZH: I listened to some the material on the Chinese with Ease CDs. The first dialogues are indeed annoyingly slow.

No Esperanto, no Portuguese, no Irish.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2018 - Summary of week 3

Another late update. I'm not behind schedule, but somehow things get in the way for these summaries.

CS: No change of approach (yet). A little more than one week left of The Study. If my level was A0 before the project started, at least it's a strong(er) A0 now.

DE: Diese Woche habe ich mit dem Buch Sakriversum (wieder)angefangen zu lesen. Ich erinnere mich nicht viel an die Geschichte. Ich gehe davon aus, dass Deutsch nur eine der Sprachen ist, die viel Zeit brauchen, um sich anzufreunden.

ES: Me decidi leer esta semana. Me encontré con Pippa Mediaslargas (traducción de sueco, Pippi Långstrump, de Astrid Lindgren). No lo he leído antes, pero conozco a los carácteros muy bien.

FR: Comme mes autres langues, j'ai décidé de lire cette semaine. J'ai trouvé un "facile a lire", Maigret et le clochard (niveau B - basée sur un vocabulaire de 1500 mots). Je lis tout à haute voix. Ça devient plus facile.

RU: Another go at Путешествия Гулливера at BliuBliu. I have the free account which means reading in 5 minute bursts (then there's a countdown before you can go on). It gets easier and easier, but I'm not sure about how to treat the word bank. I know that Jinx has used Bliu Bliu. Any more users here? When do you mark words Easy? What about inflected words? (Russian is full of them, and at one point I thought I'd only mark words in their "dictionary form", e.g. infinitives)

YUE: More podcasts. Typically two in 15 minutes, maybe three on a Sunday (when I spend 30 minutes on the language). A lot of new words and sentences are added after each podcast. Big summary coming up when the study is over.

ZH: I opened my Elementary Chinese I. I've used it (and vol II) as supplementary material many years ago. As reading was this week's focus, I skipped the grammar notes and just read the text - aloud.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2018 - Summary of week 4

Alright, just a few days late this time - I wanted to post this summary before the end of January (and this part of the world, it's still a half hour one minute left).

CS: Just three more days of Czech! I found a study path with a decent approach. One sentence structure per podcast. First a question, then a standard reply with four variations.

DE: Diese Woche habe ich nur die Assimil-Lektionen zugehört.

ES: Empecé (de nuevo) con el método Scriptorium de que Professor Arguelles ha escrito mucho. Mi material es Assimil.

FR: La même méthode comme l'espagnol. J'écris environ une leçon (ou un dialogue) en 15 minutes.

RU: I can't do exactly the same activities in all languages (especially not writing!), so this was another week of listening to random stuff on Echo Moskvy.

YUE: I think I've found the same series of podcasts I listened to in Czech one month ago. Going to the post office, exchanging currency, buying a phone...

ZH: Like Russian, another week of listening (to the rest the Assimil lessons).

A short and boring update, but still an update. No breakthroughs whatsover, but thinking of last week, it took only a few days to get into shape for reading in weaker languages. As long as I understand what I'm reading, that is.

Inspiring topic of last week:
32000 words of intensive reading - an accidental experiment

I don't think I've mentioned that I saw a brilliant opera version of Dracula a few weeks ago. It was broadcast on Swedish television, with a Swedish ensemble. I decided to give the classic a chance and found the audiobook (in English!). I like it a lot.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Short summary of my last six months with Cantonese and Czech (plus my reflections)

Main method/content for both languages were the podcast lessons from Innovative Languages (the 101 series) - 171 Czech lessons (total duration: 5h 10m) and 159 in Cantonese (total duration: 6h 12m). I rarely listened to anything more than once. At least 50% of any podcast consists of "teaching language", banter, jingles... This was (and still is) annoying.

In September I started watching cartoons in both languages, and listening to radio programmes in Czech - just to do "something else". The cartoons sometimes had L2 subtitles (as if those would help!). I also watched a handful of movies where the characters spoke Cantonese. (When they weren't beating up each other.) A 90 minute movie rarely means 90 minutes of spoken language (sometimes not even half of it!). Hopefully someone who chose the movie track will fill in.

I did almost nothing in October/November, but in December, I returned to the podcasts and did a few lessons every day, including the last day of the study (January 31st).

Have I improved? It's difficult to say how much. My skills were close to A0 in both languages before - no evaluation test. Just for fun, I took a few for Czech the other day. ~600 words/~A1 according to one of them (a multiple choice test), and "At the end of Elementary (A2)" according to the other test (=a list of words plus a checkbox next to each one, "Do you know this word or not?").

What I do know, is the number of cards added to Anki during the study period:

CS: 2033 cards - 582 mature ones at the end of the period.
YUE: 2064 cards - the deck had 1783 cards before the study, so out of the total 3847 (in my Cantonese deck), it seems that 2474 are mature (the older cards plus another ~700, I assume?).

Almost the same number of podcasts in the two languages, almost the same number of cards - and roughly the same "progress" from Unseen to Mature.

Maybe someone finds this information helpful.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2018 - Summary of week 5

Time for an update.

CS: Minor changes. Just one podcast per day and a more focused approach to Anki - I don't rush through the deck, I say the word/phrase aloud and then go to the next card.

DE: Ich habe mit Scriptorium angefangen. Vor ein paar Jahren, als ich in Langschrift schrieb, fühlte ich Schmerzen in meinen Handgelenken. Manchmal werde ich zu begeistert vom Schreiben... (das gleiche wie zu viel lesen, zu viel "Shadowing" usw). Jetzt schreibe ich nur für jeweils 15 Minuten.

EO: Mi denove legis La Sankta Biblio - unu ĉapitron tage, laŭte. Por iu kalo mi sentas min religia kiam mi legas ion laŭte... precipe ĉi tion tekstspecon.

ES: Esta semana escuché las últimas lecciones de Assimil. Como Sfuqua, ahora sé mucho sobre el señor Baldomero.

FR: J'ai passé du temps avec de l'audio Assimil. J'ai besoin d'écouter beaucoup.

RU: I continued with the grammar studies in Russian in exercises.

YUE: Same approach as Czech, one podcast per day and a better long-term approach to Anki.

ZH: I wanted to mix activities and spend some time on grammar again, so I dug out a dusty copy of Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar (Claudia Ross). It must have been several years since I worked with that book - one of my bookmarks was an old library receipt from September 2009 (!). The first exercises was numbers. If I see the figures or have to translate from another language, I can say three-digit numbers alright (maybe four-digit numbers), but the 10'000 system makes my head spin, as do numbers written in hanzi. 八十八，二十三 and so on works fine, but I can't parse stuff like 五千二百七十三 / 5 273 or higher, e.g. 四十萬零二百五十 / 400 250 (or in plain English : forty ten-thousands, zero, two-hundred and fifty).