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vijayjohn wrote:Hey, ich, it's nice to see you back again! I have a job now, too. Luckily, I do like mine, but it took me a while to get to the point where I felt like I was managing to balance work with my personal language-learning. Now I guess the main problem for me is more like balancing language-learning with following politics given who our next president is going to be.
ich wrote:Have you been keeping up with all the political news that you were now going to try to squeeze into your schedule? There has been plenty of it!
ich wrote:Thanks so much for your support, while I am taking on these languages!
How are you enjoying the Swahili lessons on Duolingo by the way?
I can understand what you mean how you sometimes have to have a lot of patience to use that program because they make you do the same circles so many times.
It is helpful for me because it gives me some sort of direction with audio support, but if I wanted to progress faster, it probably wouldn't be my first pick either.
I was browsing the African Language forum by the way, and I saw that you were learning Dinka at one time. Are you still learning that?
Someone at my workplace spoke that language, and I almost dabbled in it. I struggled with finding good resources. Things like that make me frustrated very quickly. You really dug deep for them and found some good stuff!
vijayjohn wrote:Btw, you're in North Dakota? My parents and brother used to live in Rapid City for a few years or so before I was born.
vijayjohn wrote:they make you go through the same routines so many times (translate this, write out the correct words here, pick the best option, translate this, write the word, pick the option, translate, write, pick, translate, write, pick...), and to me, it feels like doing my online translation job for free.
vijayjohn wrote: I love linguistic diversity.
vijayjohn wrote:I never found any good textbooks or anything for Malayalam. Now, though, I speak it almost natively.
vijayjohn wrote: I'm curious to see whether I can get my French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and/or Mandarin Chinese up to that level, too (and, more generally, how many languages I can get to that level. All six? Less than six? More than six? Can I take an exam to certify that I'm fluent or whatever? I don't really know of one for Malayalam. Also, if I don't manage to get a given language up to that level, how far can or will I?).
ich wrote:I feel like my brain isn't as sharp now, as it was when I was younger.
I am moving somewhat forward in Vietnamese. I am writing all the vocab in my notebook that I have been introduced to up to this point because it got to be more than I could keep track of and I wanted to make notecards of them. I am finding out that I am remembering the vocab so much better by just writing it in my own handwriting in my notebook.
You have an online translation job? That sounds awesome!
How did you get to such a high level in Malayalam? Were you ever immersed in their culture at one point?
For 15 years now, I have been having these very thoughts as well. I have been trying to have my Spanish and any other language I have ever dabbled in to reach my level in German. That is the bar that I have always set. I keep wondering if I can ever achieve that again, however, my German just continues to build, and it just seems like such a huge mountain to climb again with another language. Some things that I know in German, I didn't even realize it when I was learning them. I basically acquired these tidbits of knowledge. It is so effortless. I feel like I am an eternity away from this effortless point in all of my languages including Spanish.
vijayjohn wrote:But have you considered doing something with Norwegian other than Duolingo and notecards?
vijayjohn wrote: It's called Unbabel, if you're interested. They don't actually make you translate per se; they use an automatic translator (Google? ) and then put it through a pipeline of human editors who each edit the translation for better accuracy. You can try to do this for as many language pairs as you want, and you translate just a (usually short) text snippet at a time (say, a few sentences), and they pay you for each one you do through PayPal and show you how much they're paying you.
vijayjohn wrote: I lost all my Malayalam. I struggled to relearn it for so many years (seriously, I have never poured this much effort into any other language), but after something like 25 years of this, it seems to have finally paid off! Now I've managed to get my parents to talk to me almost exclusively in Malayalam.
vijayjohn wrote:I was also finding that my Malayalam was improving significantly whereas my other languages weren't, but I'm hoping maybe I can try to change that. Currently, I'm trying to achieve some progress by not reading anything in Malayalam for a while and only reading things in (or at least for teaching) another one of my target languages instead.
Dr. House wrote:As someone who also dabbled in Vietnamese, how are you holding up? I still recognize some words in written Vietnamese like thit (meat) , but I can hardly say anything. All those tones, nasals, implosive endings and similar vowels were driving me crazy. Yeah and all the pronouns!! I feel like Mandarin phonology is so much easier, but not because of less tones.
ich wrote::
I scored a 59 on my Norwegian one. I missed 11 questions. It said I was upper intermediate. I think that may be a tad bit off. [...] I was able to infer some of the answers even though I barely knew what the sentence was saying.
księżycowy wrote:ich wrote::
I scored a 59 on my Norwegian one. I missed 11 questions. It said I was upper intermediate. I think that may be a tad bit off. [...] I was able to infer some of the answers even though I barely knew what the sentence was saying.
I was able to do the same with there Japanese test. I barely knew any of the words after maybe the first 10 questions. But I did a lot of guessing with what grammar I do know. It gave me an "intermediate" score, when I'm really a pretty shaky beginner.
I usually don't give much credence to tests like those, but I had some time to waste today.
dEhiN wrote:I found with those particular tests (as well as others online), it's easy to score pretty well. For one thing, the test is really only for reading comprehension, so ich perhaps your reading level in Norwegian is upper intermediate? For another thing, if you have some knowledge of grammar in the target language and/or similar languages, or extensive vocabulary in similar languages, you basically get help with the test. Which I guess again supports the first thing - that these tests are good for reading level.
ich wrote:I did, however, manage to keep up with my SRS for 10 straight days. I am so proud. hehe I have been introducing 30 new words each day. So far, I am right on schedule. Once I get all 781 words that I have from Duolingo intregrated, I think I am just going to stop introducing new words into my SRS for a while because as I am working through the vocab, I am figuring out that the words really pile up, just introducing 30 a day. For example, on day 28, I will have to go through 480 cards if I don't miss any. So far, I usually only miss one or two cards when going through a stack of 120 at level 3. 480 is way too overwhelming to go through during the school year. Maybe, during the school year, I can try introducing just 5-10 words a days or something like that. I will see when the time comes.
dEhiN wrote:Now I have 3 options groups called "Languages Group 1/2/3". They basically have the same settings, except that group 1 has 5 new cards a day, group 2 has 2, and group 3 has 1. And I've set my steps to "10 120 1440". Another thing I've learned to do is use multiple decks, and I split it up based on resource (ex. I might have one deck for French Duolingo, then another for Spanish Duolingo, etc.).
dEhiN wrote:*For those who don't know what I mean by steps, it's basically how many minutes between when the card is shown. So, using the example I gave, when a card is first shown, choosing Good as a response will then show the card in 120 minutes or 2 hours. If I choose Good again, then the card is shown in 24 hours, then 48 hours, and then 72 hours. Finally, after all that - a total of 7 days - the card goes into Review mode and is considered to have been learned.
dEhiN wrote:So I missed the part where you wrote that you are using the Leitner Box (and specifically the Fluent Forever 64-day version of the Leitner Box). Anki works differently; it is still an SRS based system, but it doesn't have the concept of levels. You could look up how Anki works, or if you're curious, I can share quickly how it works.
dEhiN wrote:I like your idea of using Duolingo and writing the new words down in your notebook until you get to the next checkpoint and then adding them to your flashcard system.
dEhiN wrote:I know Duo does have its own algorithm for making sure you don't forget words, but I like the idea of having all my vocab consolidated as much as possible, which is what I try to use Anki for.
dEhiN wrote:I've attempted to write different updates in French.
ich wrote:That would be great if you wouldn't mind explaining it to me briefly.
SuperMemo pioneered the concept of a system that keeps track of the ideal time to review material and optimizes itself based on the performance of the user.
In SuperMemo’s spaced repetition system, every time you answer a question, you tell the program how well you were able to remember it – whether you forgot completely, made a small mistake, remembered with trouble, remembered easily, etc. The program uses this feedback to decide the optimal time to show you the question again. Since a memory gets stronger each time you successfully recall it, the time between reviews gets bigger and bigger – so you may see a question for the first time, then 3 days later, 15 days later, 45 days later, and so on.
ich wrote:And I am not sure exactly of the reason, but I seem to memorize the words better using the Leitner Box over using Duolingo.
ich wrote:Do you feel that the Anki algorithm works for you better than Duolingo's?
ich wrote:Also, I want to end this post with a question to anyone reading this. See, today I came across the phrase "helt alene." ("all alone") When I tried to guess this word, I wrote "alle alene." I've noticed in the past that every time I see "hel," the German word "ganz" tends to fit in the context quite well. I know this, and I am trying to transfer this over when I think in Norwegian, however my mother tongue is just too strong, however, when I even picture saying something like "alle alleine" or something like that, it sort of makes my skin crawl. So, apparently I have acquired this phrase. I never think about the context I need to use "ganz" in as opposed to "alle." I couldn't even explain it to someone. So, why is it that I cannot transfer this concept of "ganz" over to my Norwegian. Also, have any of you out there experienced something similar to this?
dEhiN wrote:So it seems Anki's algorithm is based on another SRS program called SuperMemo
dEhiN wrote:I found the same thing essentially: that using just Duolingo alone wasn't helpful for me. I think it might have to do with the way our brains work. Basically every time a memory is accessed in a new context, a new connection/neural pathway is made to it. So after some time, certain memories (which I assume includes vocabulary words and grammar concepts in any language) will have many connections to it, essentially signaling that that memory is important and also making it easier to access that memory. Following this logic, I thought of it this way: when I use Duolingo alone, the connections to what I learned through Duolingo were limited and specifically tied to the "Duolingo context". By using Anki and other methods to utilise what I learned, I'm creating new connections to that memory. Basically the words/grammar becomes easier to access because the memory isn't tied to a specific "Duolingo" context.
dEhiN wrote:ich wrote:Also, I want to end this post with a question to anyone reading this. See, today I came across the phrase "helt alene." ("all alone") When I tried to guess this word, I wrote "alle alene." I've noticed in the past that every time I see "hel," the German word "ganz" tends to fit in the context quite well. I know this, and I am trying to transfer this over when I think in Norwegian, however my mother tongue is just too strong, however, when I even picture saying something like "alle alleine" or something like that, it sort of makes my skin crawl. So, apparently I have acquired this phrase. I never think about the context I need to use "ganz" in as opposed to "alle." I couldn't even explain it to someone. So, why is it that I cannot transfer this concept of "ganz" over to my Norwegian. Also, have any of you out there experienced something similar to this?
What's your mother tongue? Also I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but that's because I don't know German! However, perhaps one reason you can't transfer a concept that works in German to Norwegian is because they are different languages? I've experience this with Romance languages: though, for example, French and Spanish are fairly similar, there are concepts in French that I can't transfer over to Spanish or vice versa. The simplest example of this would probably be the same word (that could even have the same meaning but) which are used in different contexts.
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