Saim's log 2017-2019

[Saim]

I can relate so much to that feeling. As much as Anki has been the backbone of my language learning, I must admit too that the reviews become tedious real fast. However, if you saw how I format my cards, you'd see that the program itself isn't to blame 100%…

Yeah, once Anki becomes a chore you're probably better off just using native media, at least in my experience. This is a hobby, after all.

Here's a couple screenshots of my own Anki, so you can get an idea of my "style", which I am quite particular about:

Wait, you have Albanian - Romanian cards (first image)? And what does the gray and red highlighting represent (second image)?

[Michael]

Wait, you have Albanian - Romanian cards (first image)? And what does the gray and red highlighting represent (second image)?

Yes. Even though the course is in English (Teach Yourself™), I decided that memorizing Romanian vocab through Albanian would make the task of learning the language much easier [than through English] and it would it make more interesting. If one knows Albanian grammar, then one has the task of learning Romanian grammar mostly cut out for them. Besides, that though, having the cards in Albanian helps me maintain my Albanian skills on a passive level.

Now, don't quote me on this, as this is personal opinion, but from what I've observed, there is an unseen yet strong connection between Albanian and Romanian that is obvious to those who know both languages. (Although, a few pioneering linguists have boldly claimed that it was Old Albanian that shaped the formation of the Balkan Sprachbund and whose influence triggered the adoption, by neighboring South Slavic & Roman settlers, of those peculiar morphological features that come to mind when we think of the grammar of one of the languages in the Sprachbund.)

As an extra incentive, "Albanian>Romanian" helps me compare and contrast the languages in real time. In particular, I love it when the Latin word is preserved in Albanian but not in Romanian, e.g. kërkoj ‘I search, look for; I ask for’, from Late Latin circō, which in Romanian is a căuta, from captāre (cognate to Neapolitan accattà ‘to buy’ or French acheter)—according to WP, there are 200 such words.

The red highlighting in the sample answer in Image 2 shows you where the answer that you typed was incorrect, while the gray highlighting is to show you the rest of the correct answer. (It was kinda hard for me to explain this.)

[voron]

The red highlighting in the sample answer in Image 2 shows you where the answer that you typed was incorrect, while the gray highlighting is to show you the rest of the correct answer. (It was kinda hard for me to explain this.)

Wait, you can create cards in Anki where you have to type the answer? Is there a plug-in that does that?

Just like Saim, I use Anki with sentences and in the recognition only mode (I stole the idea from Karavinka actually); and just like Saim, I have audios for my every sentence -- I don't record them myself though, I use a subtitles editor and the sub2srs program to generate cards with audio. This approach, i.e. sentences with audio plus SRS, makes it really similiar to Glossika's new online system; one thing that is different is that Glossika prompts you for both recall and recognition, doesn't it?

I effectively used SRS for single words just once, for my Kurdish course. There was a ready deck available on Memrise for the book we used at the course, and it did wonders.

EDIT: Ok, seems like enabling typing in Anki is not a plug-in but a native feature (and as such, I assume it should work on the phone app as well):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/ ... s_on_anki/

Hmm it makes me want to export that Kurdish deck on Memrise and convert it into Anki deck with typing -- just that I don't have to switch between different SRS systems.

[Saim]

Yes. Even though the course is in English (Teach Yourself™), I decided that memorizing Romanian vocab through Albanian would make the task of learning the language much easier [than through English] and it would it make more interesting. If one knows Albanian grammar, then one has the task of learning Romanian grammar mostly cut out for them. Besides, that though, having the cards in Albanian helps me maintain my Albanian skills on a passive level.

Laddering is always fun. I've learned quite a lot of French from Assimil courses.

(Although, a few pioneering linguists have boldly claimed that it was Old Albanian that shaped the formation of the Balkan Sprachbund and whose influence triggered the adoption, by neighboring South Slavic & Roman settlers, of those peculiar morphological features that come to mind when we think of the grammar of one of the languages in the Sprachbund.)

I mean, it makes intuitive sense that Old Albanian = Illyrian but it seems impossible to prove...

I don't record them myself though, I use a subtitles editor and the sub2srs program to generate cards with audio.

Would this be easy to learn? I've seen people talk about subs2rs on the internet but it seems like it has a steep learning curve.

This approach, i.e. sentences with audio plus SRS, makes it really similiar to Glossika's new online system; one thing that is different is that Glossika prompts you for both recall and recognition, doesn't it?

Yeah in the new courses the default setting is recall, but IIRC you can change it. In the old courses A was recognition, B was recall and C was target language only.

I effectively used SRS for single words just once, for my Kurdish course. There was a ready deck available on Memrise for the book we used at the course, and it did wonders.

Yeah for me it made it easy to get straight As in language classes at uni because often they would test you on wordlists (which would be, like, a third or a quarter of the grade for exam) or cloze deletion, but other than that I can't be bothered with it. It helped me a lot with Urdu, Hungarian and Hebrew in the past but I experienced a lot more burnout and procrastination than now.

(I stole the idea from Karavinka actually)

I'll admit to being influenced by Karavinka as well, although it was also Glossika and the "Fluent Forever" guy that got me to start thinking this way.

EDIT: Ok, seems like enabling typing in Anki is not a plug-in but a native feature (and as such, I assume it should work on the phone app as well):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/ ... s_on_anki/

Oh wow, now I never need to use Memrise again.

[voron]

I don't record them myself though, I use a subtitles editor and the sub2srs program to generate cards with audio.

Would this be easy to learn? I've seen people talk about subs2rs on the internet but it seems like it has a steep learning curve.

No, it's really easy. You just select
- your video or audio file
- the subtitle file in your target language
- the subtitle file in your native language (if you have one -- it's an optional parameter)

...press Generate, and it outputs your Anki cards. It has lots of settings but most of the time it works just fine with the defaults.

Getting a good subtitle file is much more fuss. I use transcripts and a subtitle editor (Aegisub -- which does require some time to learn).

I just shared my GLOSS and Songs deck, so you can take a look at what they are like:
GLOSS: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/240406337
Songs: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2017823048

(You don't even have to download them -- there are preview cards directly on the website).

EDIT: I just noticed that 2 of the cards in the preview of the GLOSS deck (with long sentences) are not actually mine. I use GLOSS level 1 and 1+, and these cards are from GLOSS level 2, which someone else created here:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1426585845

I merged it together with my own deck.

EDIT2: And my Songs deck, I named it Levantine Arabic Songs when I was sharing it, but it has Egyptian and MSA songs as well -- as you can see in the preview cards. Anyway, you got the idea.

[Saim]

No, it's really easy. You just select
- your video or audio file
- the subtitle file in your target language
- the subtitle file in your native language (if you have one -- it's an optional parameter)

...press Generate, and it outputs your Anki cards. It has lots of settings but most of the time it works just fine with the defaults.

Nice, I'll give it a shot!

I just shared my GLOSS and Songs deck, so you can take a look at what they are like:
GLOSS: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/240406337
Songs: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/201782304

(You don't even have to download them -- there are preview cards directly on the website).

Cool, thanks. Why did you delete the songs deck? Or did they delete it because of copyright or something?

[voron]

Why did you delete the songs deck? Or did they delete it because of copyright or something?

I didn't, the link in my original post still works; but in your quote in the previous post it doesn't because the last digit is missing.

Here is the correct link again:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2017823048

[Saim]

Getting a good subtitle file is much more fuss. I use transcripts and a subtitle editor (Aegisub -- which does require some time to learn).

Is there any way to insert all the same timestamps from the YouTube transcript into Aegis? Or do you have to do all of them manually?

Why did you delete the songs deck? Or did they delete it because of copyright or something?

I didn't, the link in my original post still works; but in your quote in the previous post it doesn't because the last digit is missing.

Here is the correct link again:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2017823048

Thanks!

[voron]

Is there any way to insert all the same timestamps from the YouTube transcript into Aegis?

Yes, of course. You can download a subtitle file from youtube with these websites:
https://downsub.com
http://www.yousubtitles.com

(one of them has annoying ads and I don't remember which one, you can try and see).

You can then use the subtitle file directly with sub2srs, or with your subtitle editor.

[vijayjohn]

Saim Bhai, would you like to join me for a study group for (each of) Serbian, Urdu, German, Russian, Arabic, and/or any of your other languages? I've been seriously studying all of those, but I don't mind dabbling in any other languages, either. (In case you couldn't already tell from the explosion of language study groups recently. There already is a Polish study group, and it kind of lost its fire because IIUC there's only one other UniLanger who's seriously studying it right now).

[Saim]

Saim Bhai, would you like to join me for a study group for (each of) Serbian, Urdu, German, Russian, Arabic, and/or any of your other languages? I've been seriously studying all of those, but I don't mind dabbling in any other languages, either. (In case you couldn't already tell from the explosion of language study groups recently. There already is a Polish study group, and it kind of lost its fire because IIUC there's only one other UniLanger who's seriously studying it right now).

It kind of depends on what we'd be doing and for which language. Isn't the point of a study group to go through a resource together to motivate each other?

For Serbian and Urdu all I'm going to do is keep sentence mining for Anki and weekly contact with native materials.
For Polish I'm mostly going to increase time spent on native materials and do a bit of writing. For those languages I could participate in a study group if anyone needs help but I wouldn't want to go through a specific text book with anyone. Or maybe if we want to set specific videos or texts rather than textbooks (like: this week we will study this song, then this episode, etc.)? I could see that helping me keeping discipline with Urdu.

For Arabic, I think I would massively benefit from doing it with someone. I honestly wouldn't mind going back through the Syrian Colloquial textbook, it's quite comprehensive and I really rushed through it the first time around. Or going through LangMedia videos for either Arabic or Turkish. So I'm 100% down for Arabic if that's the kind of thing other people would want to do.

For German and Russian I wouldn't mind going through some book with grammar drills or something. Or picking specific songs or texts or whatever. I will also be going through Niemiecki. Repetytorium leksykalno-tematyczne but I don't expect any of you to get that delivered, haha.

[vijayjohn]

YAY! All of that is exactly along the lines I was thinking of!

What kind of native materials are you using for Serbian, Urdu, and Polish? Also, LangMedia is really useful for Russian and does have some interesting (if somewhat less advanced) resources even for German! (I seriously have never heard some of the German they teach there anywhere else, especially the most elementary stuff).

[Saim]

YAY! All of that is exactly along the lines I was thinking of!

What kind of native materials are you using for Serbian, Urdu, and Polish? Also, LangMedia is really useful for Russian and does have some interesting (if somewhat less advanced) resources even for German! (I seriously have never heard some of the German they teach there anywhere else, especially the most elementary stuff).

Serbian: I read Peščanik and B92, listen to rap and pop music, watch 24 minuta sa Zoranom Kesićem and Al Jazeera Balkans

Urdu: Basically BBCUrdu (https://www.youtube.com/user/BBCUrdu, http://bbc.co.uk/urdu), some comments in a Facebook book for secularists

Polish: not much, just following this one leftist Facebook group

So what amount of intensive study do we want to commit to and for which languages? As I said the main ones I want to push forward this year are German, Russian, Turkish and Polish, but I will also be doing weekly work on Urdu and Serbian so I wouldn't mind picking media for us to look at together.

[vijayjohn]

So what amount of intensive study do we want to commit to and for which languages?

DAYYYYYYUM Saim Bhai askin' the hard questions early!!! (Omg I sound like my Dutch and Brazilian co-worker who sounds like an American frat bro in both English and Dutch ).

Well, let's see...all of those are languages I've been seriously studying except Polish. And come to think of it, I could use some intensive study of those languages, given that I've been very active here and practically abandoned Reddit for now. What kind of pace do you think would work best for you? It seems like the norm for these study groups is weekly assignments, so...I guess for each of Urdu and Serbian, we could try doing one media assignment a week? (I recommend ghazals for Urdu btw - not exclusively ghazals, and not necessarily for listening to or even for appreciating the poetic value or whatever, but just for getting lots of Perso-Arabic vocabulary thrown in your face all at once ). For the other languages I've mentioned below, we could maybe try for one lesson/video a week or something (one video in the case of LangMedia; German is an exception here).

For German, in addition to Easy Languages (of course), while there are a few lessons on LangMedia, they're relatively simple and I suspect won't take all that long to get through if you're interested in those. Also, księżycowy has been going through a book called Begegnungen I can share with you if you'd like; he's currently doing some pretty basic stuff in it, but that doesn't mean you have to. (I think he may also have audio to go with it, which unfortunately, I don't have). I also have two grammars plus TY German from 1938 and Teach Yourself More German from around the same time period, all of which I can share as well, though I doubt any of them is going to be of much help to you. There are also some audio courses with transcripts for each audio file, along with some written courses IIRC, on Deutsche Welle (and they have a variety of options for the source language, too - I just found an audio file for a course for learning German through Pashto, for example). GLOSS also has stuff for German. These are the best resources that come to mind for me right now (aside from songs, radio, and news sites, of course).

For Russian, of course, I said that LangMedia has a lot of useful resources, and Easy Russian has 29 lessons and counting right now (they seem to be steadily adding new ones). Once again, I have the (really!) old TY Russian plus an old-fashioned book called 60 Lessons in Russian and five grammars of Russian, and GLOSS has things. I can't think I can think of anything else, though (again, excluding songs, etc., but see below! I have another grammar at home, but I don't know how to make it available to anyone, and it's super-boring anyway IMO ).

Are you still doing Turkish? And Arabic? (One, or both?) For Arabic, we could go through SCA and/or LangMedia like you were saying. (I personally might go through GLOSS, but I'm not going to subject you to it ). For Turkish, again, we could use LangMedia (and again I can't really think of anything else other than songs and such but see below). EDIT: I forgot to say, for Russian, I've been trying to go through a few books I bought by finding words I don't know in them and posting them. For Turkish, I've started doing that with this Bible-sized book and with this, both of which I have in paperback. For Arabic, I've also started doing this with the Thousand and One Nights, which I also have in paperback! ).

Also, TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME BEFORE YOU CLICK THIS (I try to help people not be surprised by loud audio ) but I'll just leave this here.

[Saim]

I guess for each of Urdu and Serbian, we could try doing one media assignment a week?

Sounds good to me.

(I recommend ghazals for Urdu btw - not exclusively ghazals, and not necessarily for listening to or even for appreciating the poetic value or whatever, but just for getting lots of Perso-Arabic vocabulary thrown in your face all at once ).

I've never bothered with ghazals but I've been meaning to get into them for the reason you mentioned. You pick the first one.

For German, in addition to Easy Languages (of course), while there are a few lessons on LangMedia, they're relatively simple and I suspect won't take all that long to get through if you're interested in those. Also, księżycowy has been going through a book called Begegnungen I can share with you if you'd like; he's currently doing some pretty basic stuff in it, but that doesn't mean you have to. (I think he may also have audio to go with it, which unfortunately, I don't have). I also have two grammars plus TY German from 1938 and Teach Yourself More German from around the same time period, all of which I can share as well, though I doubt any of them is going to be of much help to you. There are also some audio courses with transcripts for each audio file, along with some written courses IIRC, on Deutsche Welle (and they have a variety of options for the source language, too - I just found an audio file for a course for learning German through Pashto, for example). GLOSS also has stuff for German. These are the best resources that come to mind for me right now (aside from songs, radio, and news sites, of course).

For me my comprehension is high enough in German and my grammar is OK enough (I don't have huge problems with
word order or conjugations, it's mostly just the declension of the articles, but I think sentence mining will help resolve that) that at the moment I'd mostly want to work on native media (mostly rap music at the moment).

Or maybe you'd like to go through German: An Essential Grammar (Routledge, I have it in pdf format)? I'd also definitely be down for working on Easy German videos.

For Russian, of course, I said that LangMedia has a lot of useful resources, and Easy Russian has 29 lessons and counting right now (they seem to be steadily adding new ones). Once again, I have the (really!) old TY Russian plus an old-fashioned book called 60 Lessons in Russian and five grammars of Russian, and GLOSS has things. I can't think I can think of anything else, though (again, excluding songs, etc., but see below! I have another grammar at home, but I don't know how to make it available to anyone, and it's super-boring anyway IMO ).

LangMedia and Easy Russian sound fun. What about A Comprehensive Russian Grammar (Blackwell, also pdf)?

Are you still doing Turkish? And Arabic? (One, or both?) For Arabic, we could go through SCA and/or LangMedia like you were saying. (I personally might go through GLOSS, but I'm not going to subject you to it ). For Turkish, again, we could use LangMedia (and again I can't really think of anything else other than songs and such but see below). EDIT: I forgot to say, for Russian, I've been trying to go through a few books I bought by finding words I don't know in them and posting them. For Turkish, I've started doing that with this Bible-sized book and with this, both of which I have in paperback. For Arabic, I've also started doing this with the Thousand and One Nights, which I also have in paperback! )

I want to do a lot of Turkish and the absolute minimum of Arabic so that I don't feel like I've abandoned it. I will also be using Glossika for Turkish.

Turkish: one LangMedia, one song, and maybe a page or half a page of the B1 Istanbul course?
Arabic: one anything (alternative between SCA, songs and LM)

Also, TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME BEFORE YOU CLICK THIS (I try to help people not be surprised by loud audio ) but I'll just leave this here.

What a strange site layout. I've already found a couple of the learning packs through another source, but thanks.

[księżycowy]

Also, księżycowy has been going through a book called Begegnungen I can share with you if you'd like; he's currently doing some pretty basic stuff in it, but that doesn't mean you have to. (I think he may also have audio to go with it, which unfortunately, I don't have).

For me my comprehension is high enough in German and my grammar is OK enough (I don't have huge problems with
word order or conjugations, it's mostly just the declension of the articles, but I think sentence mining will help resolve that) that at the moment I'd mostly want to work on native media (mostly rap music at the moment).

Or maybe you'd like to go through German: An Essential Grammar (Routledge, I have it in pdf format)? I'd also definitely be down for working on Easy German videos.

I have the audio for the first two books in the Begegnungen series (the A1 and A2 levels). I can share, if anyone wants.

And I am definitely up for doing more than just going through Begegnungen, if either (or both) of you want to do something. The videos or going through a grammar sound interesting. I've also thought of translating some literature, but at my level I'd need something easy-ish.

[vijayjohn]

All of that sounds good to me (not totally sure what to do about literature, but maybe we could find some way to work that in, too). Tbh I'm not usually a huge fan of grammars, but I kind of know the grammars for these two languages already, so eh, why not? Besides, I'll have at least one other person to slog through it with!

What a strange site layout.

Just be glad you've never seen my website for Malayalam then. I really have zero sense of design. I guess the American government has slightly more.

[księżycowy]

Maybe we can find some short stories or something online, like I did with Japanese.

[Saim]

Sounds good to me. The grammar part isn't really that important.

I'm afraid I might find the A1 or A2 book too boring, I'd want to go through a B1 course at least...

I started the Turkish group.

[księżycowy]

You guys can go through one of the upper level textbooks and help me out with the A1 and A2 textbooks, if you want. I hope to eventually catch up.