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Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-05, 16:03
by Saim
I'm going to try a new way to practice reading "hard" languages when an advanced beginner level in a way that's fun and not exhausting.

  1. Find an interesting article. This is the key step. Never read anything that's not compelling.
  2. Plug the entire article into Google Translate and read the entire English translation first. Don't try to read the article in the original looking up each new word, that's too hard and not fun or interesting, only working if you brute-force your way through it every day or combine it with classes.
  3. Compare the original to the translation sentence-by-sentence trying to see what corresponds to what, maybe look up some words (but not all new words).
  4. Make monolingual sentence cards in Anki only with easy sentences that have one new word. Never under any circumstances add hard sentences, skip all sentences with more than one new term.

The last two steps can be done at the same time or consecutively.

For the time being I'm only going to study Basque using this method. I will resist the temptation to do anything else.

Today I studied this Basque article:
https://www.deia.eus/2018/12/21/opinion ... /beautiful (Translation)


Here are the sentences/fragments I chose:

Euskara munduko hizkuntza politena dela erakustera nator
I want to show that Basque is the most beautiful language in the world

[...] baina aitortu behar dut:
[...] but I must admit:

bideoa ikusi dudanean [...] deseroso sentitu naiz.
when I saw the video [...] I felt uncomfortable.

Ez aipatu dituen hitzengatik
Not because of the words he mentioned

ez zait iruditu egokia lehen postu horretan jartzea euskara
I did not find it appropriate to put Basque in the first place

Ederra iruditzen zait gure hizkuntzaren edertasuna aldarrikatzea
I find it beautiful to proclaim the beauty of our language

Here are the cards I made:

Front: Euskara munduko hizkuntza politena dela erakustera nator
Back: Ikusaraztea, begien aurrean ipintzea; ikusten uztea.

ikusarazi (hacer visible)
ipini (poner)
utzi (dejar)


Front: ...baina aitortu behar dut:
Back: Huts bat edo gorde nahi den zerbait adierazi.

huts (error)
gorde (esconder)
adierazi - expresar


Front: bideoa ikusi dudanean deseroso sentitu naiz.
Back: Erosoa ez dena.


Front: Ez aipatu dituen hitzengatik
Back: Zerbait edo norbait ahotan hartu

ahots > ahotan


Front: ez zait iruditu egokia lehen postu horretan jartzea euskara
Back: Norbaiten ikuspegitik, zerbaitek edo norbaitek halako itxura izan

ikuspegi (punto de vista)
halako (tal, así)
itxura (forma)


Front: Ederra iruditzen zait gure hizkuntzaren edertasuna aldarrikatzea
Back: Zerbaiten eskakizun edo defentsa aldarrika egin

eskakizun (reivindicación)
aldarrika (a gritos)

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-05, 22:59
by vijayjohn
For some reason, I was thinking of Basque recently, too. :lol:

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-06, 12:29
by księżycowy
Basque study gr-?

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-06, 18:50
by vijayjohn
-oup!

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-20, 9:11
by Saim
Saim wrote:I’ve decided to create separate YouTube channels (really more like "sub-accounts") for each of my main languages, since recommendations are separate for each of your channels.


Doesn’t work. When ever I click on the „create new channel” button it takes me to a sign-in page and then afterwards it just takes me to the front page in the channel associated with my actual name...

vijayjohn wrote:For some reason, I was thinking of Basque recently, too. :lol:


You aren’t always thinking of Basque? :shock:

vijayjohn wrote:aupa!


That’s the spirit!

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-21, 8:22
by vijayjohn
Saim wrote:You aren’t always thinking of Basque? :shock:

A European language? When I could be thinking of all those Papuan languages? :shock: (looks at map of Papua New Guinea, salivates)

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-21, 9:24
by aaakknu
vijayjohn wrote:A European language? When I could be thinking of all those Papuan languages? :shock: (looks at map of Papua New Guinea, salivates)

I understand you pretty well) I am thinking about Papuan languages often too (especially now, when I am so close to Papua) :D

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-22, 19:32
by Saim
I am better at Polish than Serbian. I just got back to Poland from Serbia and I feel like my word choice is more precise and I can express myself more freely. I feel like even last year my maximum active level in Serbian was higher than my maximum active level in Polish, so that’s an interesting development.

On the one hand it feels frustrating to still have so many gaps in my Serbian, but on the other hand I put a lot of effort into Polish this year and did a lot of sentence mining so it’s good to see that bearing fruit. I’m positive that if I keep reading and listening to Serbian while looking up words and adding sentence cards to Anki I’ll be able to fill in those gaps.

vijayjohn wrote:
Saim wrote:You aren’t always thinking of Basque? :shock:

A European language? When I could be thinking of all those Papuan languages? :shock: (looks at map of Papua New Guinea, salivates)


European? You know Basque is a Dogon language right?

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-24, 7:04
by vijayjohn
It's a doggone language, all right! :lol:

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-09-30, 20:52
by Saim
Hindi

I’ve started studying the Netflix show Sacred Games, which has Hindi audiodescription and closed captions. I’ve been using the Oxford Hindi-Hindi dictionary to make flashcards (it’s actually not that hard), and I’ve also used the hamariweb Hindi-Urdu dictionary to find the Perso-Arabic equivalents to Sanskritic terms. I’ve also been adding text-to-speech for the definitions. It’s been nice seeing so much Devanagari again.

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-01, 12:05
by Saim
Just had my MA thesis defence. Uni is over. :D

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-01, 15:13
by Yasna
Congrats! What's next for you?

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-02, 8:47
by Saim
Yasna wrote:Congrats! What's next for you?


Thanks!

I was thinking of moving to Hungary but if I can't get full time work there that'll give me a work visa then I'll stay in Serbia. :)

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-03, 14:27
by Yasna
Nice, good luck with the job hunt.

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-03, 15:15
by Saim
Yasna wrote:Nice, good luck with the job hunt.


Thanks. :)

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-03, 17:42
by Car
Congrats!

BTW: You know LingQ recently added Serbian, Croatian and now also Hungarian?

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-06, 3:30
by vijayjohn
Congratulations, Saim Bhai! I honestly didn't know there were places where you had to defend your master's thesis.

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-06, 18:26
by Saim
Car wrote:Congrats!

BTW: You know LingQ recently added Serbian, Croatian and now also Hungarian?


Thanks!

And nice, that's good to know! I'm at the point in Hungarian where I don't feel I really need to use LingQ though, it's a shame it didn't come out sooner. Anyway I'm glad they're adding more languages.

vijayjohn wrote:Congratulations, Saim Bhai! I honestly didn't know there were places where you had to defend your master's thesis.


Thanks! Why wouldn't you have to defend your master's thesis? At your uni did people only have to defend PhDs or... what?

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-10, 15:27
by Car
Saim wrote:And nice, that's good to know! I'm at the point in Hungarian where I don't feel I really need to use LingQ though, it's a shame it didn't come out sooner. Anyway I'm glad they're adding more languages.


Indeed, it is. Looks like more might be coming soon. Catalan should be added at some point now (not that you'll need it) and there was talk about Georgian being close to beta status, too. Some even mentioned Thai, but I'm not sure about that. It seems some users are really looking into way to have more languages available.

Good luck with your job hunt, BTW. What kind of job are you hoping to get?

Re: Saim's log 2017-2019

Posted: 2019-10-13, 13:55
by Saim
I've started reconsidering the necessity for isolated vocabulary study. I think for "hard" languages it's necessary to focus on the vocabulary level since finding i+1 sentences is fairly difficult. This is especially true of Mandarin due to the characters (you can hardly wait for each character to be presented in a monosyllabic word in a sentence with no other new vocabulary before you can acquire it!). Maybe if I only focused on one of these languages and spent a lot of time doing "natural" immersion alongside the sentence-based revision in Anki it would work, but otherwise I think it's important to cast a wider net and get a vague sence of a lot of vocabulary so that sentences will be easier later on.

So I've started making Quizlet decks for some of the non-transparent languages I've been studying. Here I'm going to focus on "quantity over quality", it's more important to go through more vocabulary than to learn anything particularly well. I'm not going to do the "writing" option for any of this, because practicing active recall is generally overkill, except in Mandarin because I have the pinyin as part of the answer and that is enough of a hint for the active recall part to not be frustrating. I find Quizlet to be better for this kind of thing than Anki, because you can do it whenever you want (so you can spend a few minutes here and there throughout the day doing the "association" game or the multiple choice tests) whereas Anki is better for revising sentences and maintaining a morning routine.

Car wrote:Good luck with your job hunt, BTW. What kind of job are you hoping to get?


Thanks! I don't know really. Something where I can use languages, ideally, but I guess that's quite vague. :lol: I have some experience in translation and enjoyed that quite a lot, but we'll see.