dEhiN's Language Log

[dEhiN]

"Someone"? "The ULer"? I have a name, you know!

I didn't want to call you out in case you didn't want it known we chat outside of UL!

[księżycowy]

Cat's out of the bag now....

[dEhiN]

Cat's out of the bag now....

By the way, since I can never remember your UL username, I'm just going to call you ksi-PN (for Polish name). Does that work? Or how about moon-boy? Lunar-man? Oh, I know...loony-bin!

[dEhiN]

Update time:

I haven't done any language study since my last update, but I finally organized my Anki cards. I haven't studied Anki in just over 2 years. At the time when I decided to stop, I had a deck called "Stored Languages" where I had cards for languages I wasn't actively studying, as well as a few decks for the languages I was studying. I think these basically were French, Spanish, Portuguese, Tamil, and Swedish. When I stopped using Anki, I moved those decks into Stored Languages as sub-decks. However, I always wanted to organize all the other cards into language specific sub-decks. Well, today I finally did that! It turns out I have a lot of cards spread out over quite a few languages! So, for fun, I'm going to share some of my Anki stats.

General stats

• Total card count: 4,944 cards
• Total language deck count: 23 decks

Study stats

• First review date: January 24, 2013 / Amount: 8 reviews
• Last review date: October 14, 2018 / Amount: 39 reviews
• Total days studied: 956 days (out of 2,926 days)
• Percentage of days studied: 33%
• Average study time: 14 min/day
• Average answer time: 9.25 sec
• Average study rate: 6.49 cards/min

Language specific stats

• Albanian: 54 cards
• French: 1,429 cards
• (West) Frisian: 396 cards
• German: 25 cards
• Hawaiian: 7 cards
• Hindi: 34 cards
• Hungarian: 15 cards
• Indonesian: 41 cards
• Italian: 9 cards
• Japanese: 32 cards
• Korean: 371 cards
• Latin: 34 cards
• Mandarin Chinese: 15 cards
• Norwegian: 35 cards
• Polish: 18 cards
• (Brazilian) Portuguese: 589 cards
• Romanian: 32 cards
• Spanish: 747 cards
• Swedish: 356 cards
• Tagalog: 29 cards
• (Sri Lankan) Tamil: 607 cards
• Turkish: 53 cards
• Welsh: 15 cards

So, as you can see, in the 5 years I used Anki, I amassed several thousand cards over 23 languages. I only studied about 1/3 of the time, although most of that was due to not studying consistently at all in the first few years. Most of the languages don't have many cards because I either would start a language from wanderlust and then fairly quickly drop it, or I would add cards for the odd words I might've picked up from being active on here and generally a language nerd. The two exceptions to that are Korean and Frisian, because I took a course for one semester at a community college for Korean, and I took an online course on FutureLearn for Frisian.

I remember I also made plans to go through my old language notebooks and add the vocabulary in them to Anki. My language enthusiast journey mostly started in 2011 and between 2011 and 2013, I used physical notebooks to write out any word I would learn in any language. I even had a legend that I would print and stick on the inside cover of each notebook. I used the ISO language code to section out the vocabulary and make it easier to quickly switch to another language. I think in total I have something like 10 notebooks, which I wanted to fully add to Anki. I may have started the process and even gone through a couple of notebooks, but it was ultimately a project I couldn't commit to.

One last point of interest is that I created tags for all the cards with their native language name using their native script, but I only wrote the cards themselves using their native script for Japanese, Korean, and Tamil. For Hindi and Mandarin, I wrote the cards in romanization.

[dEhiN]

Quick note:

So, I changed my signature to put Swedish into the not actively studying category. I also moved both French and Portuguese out into the active study category. While I'm currently not doing daily or regular active study, such as going through Anki or some other learning resource, I feel like I am slowly working on improving my French listening skills through listening to YouTube ads in French. I also have rekindled my interest in Portuguese through the small attempt at reading Portuguese Wikipedia the other day. Again, I'm not planning to start some daily or regular reading regime, but I think I might try and peruse a few more Wikipedia articles and see what I can grasp. I may also do the odd Portuguese Duo lesson.

[księżycowy]

By the way, since I can never remember your UL username, I'm just going to call you ksi-PN (for Polish name). Does that work? Or how about moon-boy? Lunar-man? Oh, I know...loony-bin!

Only if I get to call you D-bag.

[dEhiN]

I received an email recently from the Canada Revenue Agency, and since it's from a governmental agency, the email was in both English and French. As I've done before, I took the opportunity to read the French portion for practice. There were some things I noticed as I was reading it, which I thought I'd share here.

► Show Spoiler

Cher/Chère DAVID WATSON :

Vous êtes maintenant inscrit à l'authentification multifacteur auprès des services d'ouverture de session de l'Agence du revenu du Canada

Si vous vous êtes inscrit à l'authentification multifacteur, veuillez ne pas tenir compte de ce courriel.

Si vous ne vous êtes pas inscrit à l'authentification multifacteur, veuillez appeler au 1-800-959-7383.

Si vous téléphonez de l'extérieur du Canada et des États-Unis, appelez-nous à frais virés au 613-940-8496.

Le numéro de téléimprimeur est le 1-800-665-0354.

Ce courriel vous a été envoyé par un système automatisé. Veuillez ne pas y répondre.

Firstly, some new vocabulary terms I learned were l'authentification "authentication", multifacteur "multifactor", l'ouverture de session "login", and appeler à frais virés "call collect".

Two vocabulary terms I understood in context but weren't sure of their exact meanings were auprès de and tenir compte. The first one I always thought of as "around", but that doesn't really make sense in this context. The English version of the first sentence just says "… multi-factor authentication with …", but, if I were translating from just the French, I would maybe say "regarding"? As for tenir compte, I'm not sure if that's just a specific expression or why compte is used? Since tenir itself can mean "hold", could you not just say veuillez ne pas tenir de ce courriel "please don't hold onto (i.e., please disregard) this email"?

Lastly, I realized that it still takes me a moment or two to this day to remember that vous is both the subject and indirect object pronoun. For sentences that use any of the singular indirect object pronouns (me, te, lui/la), I'm able to instantly recognize the pronoun and understand it's grammatical significance. But with vous and nous, I first read them as the subject pronoun, forgetting they can be the indirect object pronouns. So, then something like vous vous confuses me for a second or two. Once I read the rest of the sentence and basically translate it in my head, only then do I remember that the second vous or nous is an indirect object pronoun.

[Dormouse559]

As for tenir compte, I'm not sure if that's just a specific expression or why compte is used? Since tenir itself can mean "hold", could you not just say veuillez ne pas tenir de ce courriel "please don't hold onto (i.e., please disregard) this email"?

Tenir compte de is an expression. Out of context, its common English translations include the very similar "take account of" and "take into account".

Lastly, I realized that it still takes me a moment or two to this day to remember that vous is both the subject and indirect object pronoun. For sentences that use any of the singular indirect object pronouns (me, te, lui/la), I'm able to instantly recognize the pronoun and understand it's grammatical significance. But with vous and nous, I first read them as the subject pronoun, forgetting they can be the indirect object pronouns. So, then something like vous vous confuses me for a second or two. Once I read the rest of the sentence and basically translate it in my head, only then do I remember that the second vous or nous is an indirect object pronoun.

While vous and nous can be indirect object pronouns, it's important to note that that is not what vous is doing in this email. Here, both instances of the second vous are reflexive pronouns, filling the role of direct objects.

[Prantsis]

For sentences that use any of the singular indirect object pronouns (me, te, lui/la), I'm able to instantly recognize the pronoun and understand it's grammatical significance.

lui / la

la is a direct object pronoun:

je lui parle = I speak to it/him/her
je la vois = I see it/her

[dEhiN]

Tenir compte de is an expression. Out of context, its common English translations include the very similar "take account of" and "take into account".

Merci!

While vous and nous can be indirect object pronouns, it's important to note that that is not what vous is doing in this email. Here, both instances of the second vous are reflexive pronouns, filling the role of direct objects.

D'accord et merci pour l'explication. Ça m'aide comprendre plus mieux* le deuxième cas de « vous ».

*Est-ce que la phrase « plus meiux » signifie le superlatif? Si oui, j'ai voulait à dire « comprendre plus ».

lui / la

la is a direct object pronoun:

je lui parle = I speak to it/him/her
je la vois = I see it/her

Merci pour la précision. Je connais bien quand dire « lui » mais j'oublie souvent le sens de « la » comme pronom.

[dEhiN]

Lately I've been consuming a lot of Youtube; initially, it was various stuff by Simon Whistler as well as well as discovering and devouring the past videos of the Try channel. This channel is basically a bunch of Irish Youtubers, comedians and the like who try various foods and alcoholic drinks from around the world, though sometimes it involves them trying other things non-food related. Anyway, after several days of basically going through most of their past catalogue, I started branching out to checking out some of the channels of the the individuals who try stuff on the Try channel. This led me to watch a few videos in Irish (Gaelic). (Two of them you can check out from my post in the Random language thread here.)

Eventually the Youtube algorithm started recommending other videos about languages to me, and that led me to the channel ConvoSpeak, a channel about language and culture things related to Spanish by a Colombian. There are several videos where the channel creator listens to various languages that are either related to Spanish or influenced Spanish in some way, and then rates them according to how well he can understand them. (He also tries reading short excerpts in some of the languages). Anyway, in a few of those videos, he listens to the "smaller" Iberian languages found in Spain - Asturian, Leonese, Galician, Aragonese, etc.

Watching these videos re-sparked the idea of focusing near-future language learning efforts on Romance languages, and specifically, I would focus on the Gallo-Iberian branch as I'm most comfortable with the phonology (and perhaps to a lesser extent, the morphology) of that branch. Part of me does naturally wonder whether I should first try and get my French, Spanish and Portuguese to a solid B1/B2 level in reading/writing/speaking/listening before attempting to add other Iberic and Gallic languages, but I'm hesitant to do this. Firstly, it would then take me a while to accomplish this, and I might possibly lose my interest and motivation in the process. Secondly, realistically apart from perhaps French, I don't have a strong desire to become fluent in any other language. Don't get me wrong: the language nerd in me would still love to one day be able to say I'm "fluent" in French, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. But since from a career standpoint, my focus is now IT, the language nerd in me is free to approach languages from a general interest viewpoint. This is to a degree the case with French as well! Because I live in Canada, there would be more immediate benefits to my life and career if I were to become "fluent" in French, but there really is no immediate impetus.

So, that leaves me with whether I want to take the plunge or not, and if so, how. Some of the "smaller" Iberic and Gallic Romance languages might not be available to me if there aren't English or French resources available. (Unfortunately, my Spanish and Portuguese skills aren't nearly up to snuff to learn a new language through them, though my French reading skills are.) I will say that in regard to those videos from ConvoSpeak, when he (the content creator) listened to stuff in Astur-Leonese and Galician, I was able to pick out some of the words I know in Spanish, which gives me hope that perhaps even the little Spanish I know will help me at least grasp the basics in these languages. Anyway, I'll keep anyone reading this posted.

[linguoboy]

Honestly, if your Spanish and Portuguese are decent, I'm surprised you don't just get Galician for free (as it were). Asturian's in a slightly different boat since dialects always get weird in the mountains. Supposedly, the official academy is promoting an official standard now, but I'm not sure how much acceptance it's gotten. I've got a scholarly work on it published about twenty years ago and the dialectal diversity in the phonology is such that I kind of backed away from it slowly and haven't looked at it again. (Historical initial /l/, for instance, can vary from [λ] through [ʃ] to [ʈs]. Initial Cl clusters vary even more.)

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

Honestly, if your Spanish and Portuguese are decent, I'm surprised you don't just get Galician for free (as it were).

In the case of European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, you arguably don't even get Portuguese for free with Portuguese. That said, I don't have any trouble understanding any of the younger speakers of Galician I've seen examples of. I've seen examples of elderly speakers from rural areas close to the Portuguese border who I found difficult to understand though.

[dEhiN]

Honestly, if your Spanish and Portuguese are decent, I'm surprised you don't just get Galician for free (as it were).

The problem is they're not. At this point, they're both A1. A few years ago, when I was still doing active study, perhaps my Portuguese had gotten to A2 (and by extension, my Spanish knowledge, though not necessarily my Spanish production). I have forgotten quite a bit in both languages though, so now it's a bit more a case of false beginner status.

Asturian's in a slightly different boat since dialects always get weird in the mountains. Supposedly, the official academy is promoting an official standard now, but I'm not sure how much acceptance it's gotten. I've got a scholarly work on it published about twenty years ago and the dialectal diversity in the phonology is such that I kind of backed away from it slowly and haven't looked at it again. (Historical initial /l/, for instance, can vary from [λ] through [ʃ] to [ʈs]. Initial Cl clusters vary even more.)

Do you know/remember how initial <ll> is pronounced? In the video I watched with the Colombian who listens to Leonese and then Asturian (which you can watch here if you'd like), the guy says how Leonese has at max something like 50,000 speakers with Asturian having something like 100,000 max. He also mentions about how Asturian has the Academia de la LLingua Asturiana (which is I guess the official academy you mention) which not just helped standardize the language but also produced web sites and periodicals. Lastly, for Leonese, he mentions that there's a fear that if revitalization doesn't happen, Leonese could disappear in two generations.

I was watching this with my girlfriend, and this sparked a conversation between us about the dialectal differences, the fact that Astur-Leonese is considered essentially one language, and the fact that this Colombian guy basically said he could fully understand both Leonese and Asturian. As a result of all this, she voiced the thought that perhaps apart from writing about Leonese for historical purposes, it wouldn't be such a big deal if the current speakers of Leonese just spoke Castillian. Now, she isn't someone who thinks in general that minority languages aren't important; I think her stance was coming from the fact that it seemed like due to language contact, Leonese is not that different from Castillian with a different accent.

In the case of European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, you arguably don't even get Portuguese for free with Portuguese.

Yeah, I definitely agree! While grammatically and lexically there may not be huge differences (except maybe the use of vós in Portugal which would involve learning another conjugated form for every tense and mood), phonologically there's quite a variation. And depending on Galician phonology, I'm not sure if knowing Brazilian Portuguese would be a hindrance or a help.

That said, I don't have any trouble understanding any of the younger speakers of Galician I've seen examples of. I've seen examples of elderly speakers from rural areas close to the Portuguese border who I found difficult to understand though.

That's interesting that you have an easier time understanding younger speakers of Galician but not elderly speakers close to the border. I guess I get the younger speakers, since globalized media has (I think) played a big influence in the accents of younger speakers for a lot of different languages. But wouldn't speakers close to the Portuguese border have pronunciations more similar to European Portuguese? Oh, but you've learned Brazilian Portuguese! I forgot; so is that why?

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

In the case of European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, you arguably don't even get Portuguese for free with Portuguese.

Yeah, I definitely agree! While grammatically and lexically there may not be huge differences (except maybe the use of vós in Portugal which would involve learning another conjugated form for every tense and mood), phonologically there's quite a variation.

There's a bit more lexical and grammatical variation than that. The lexical variation isn't too difficult to deal with, you can usually pick it up from context, but the grammatical variation can make sentences quite a bit more different than they otherwise would be. Aside form vós, in Brazil they don't use tu much either outside of some regions in the south, and when they do they use the same conjugation as você (the 3rd person singular conjugation) rather than the -s conjugation used in Portugal. There's also the formation of the continuous tenses using the gerund form in Brazil (as in English) but with a + infinitive in Portugal. So "Você está falando Português" (PT-BR) but "Tu estás a falar Português" (PT-PT). There are other grammatical differences, such as the positioning of object pronouns.
But the pronunciation difference is by far the biggest difficulty.

And depending on Galician phonology, I'm not sure if knowing Brazilian Portuguese would be a hindrance or a help.

I think knowing Spanish would be the biggest help, in terms of pronunciation. Whether or not Galician/Spanish phonology is closer to PT-BR or PT-PT is contentious, I've heard different Spanish speakers say that different Portugueses were easier. Personally, I think PT-BR and Galician/Spanish are slightly closer phonologically than PT-PT and Galician/Spanish, on account of the vowels.

That's interesting that you have an easier time understanding younger speakers of Galician but not elderly speakers close to the border. I guess I get the younger speakers, since globalized media has (I think) played a big influence in the accents of younger speakers for a lot of different languages.

I think it's just an older person vs young person thing - even in English I find elderly people harder to understand. Could be the content they choose to talk about, could be that the rural people have a more informal way of speaking and informal registers are more likely to contain set phrases and local vocabulary, whereas younger people approached by an interviewer might be a little more formal?

But wouldn't speakers close to the Portuguese border have pronunciations more similar to European Portuguese? Oh, but you've learned Brazilian Portuguese! I forgot; so is that why?

They may well have pronunciations closer to European Portuguese, but between European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese and Galician, I don't think it's necessarily the case that the two "Portugueses" are more similar than either are to Galician. For me at least, many times I've found it easier to understand Galician than PT-PT. (The opposite has also happened too though).

[linguoboy]

Asturian's in a slightly different boat since dialects always get weird in the mountains. Supposedly, the official academy is promoting an official standard now, but I'm not sure how much acceptance it's gotten. I've got a scholarly work on it published about twenty years ago and the dialectal diversity in the phonology is such that I kind of backed away from it slowly and haven't looked at it again. (Historical initial /l/, for instance, can vary from [λ] through [ʃ] to [ʈs]. Initial Cl clusters vary even more.)

Do you know/remember how initial <ll> is pronounced?

I just told you. Initial <ll> represents historical initial /l/. The spelling reflects the fact that in some varieties, it is [λ], but there are also affricate and fricative realisations. I think the official recommendation is to use the same cover spelling and let each speaker pronounce it according to the phonology of their native dialect, but as I said I'm not really au courant.

In the case of European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, you arguably don't even get Portuguese for free with Portuguese.

Yeah, I definitely agree! While grammatically and lexically there may not be huge differences (except maybe the use of vós in Portugal which would involve learning another conjugated form for every tense and mood), phonologically there's quite a variation.

More than between, say, California English, Caribbean English, and Scottish Standard English?

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

More than between, say, California English, Caribbean English, and Scottish Standard English?

It's a little difficult to say, as Caribbean English shades into Patois and Scottish Standard English shades into Scots at some point, and they're not as different from each other as Californian English is from either Jamaican Patois or Scots, but I would say they're more different than the more acrolectal varieties of Caribbean and Scottish English (based on my experience, which is not all that authoritative it must be said).

[dEhiN]

There's a bit more lexical and grammatical variation than that. The lexical variation isn't too difficult to deal with, you can usually pick it up from context, but the grammatical variation can make sentences quite a bit more different than they otherwise would be. Aside form vós, in Brazil they don't use tu much either outside of some regions in the south, and when they do they use the same conjugation as você (the 3rd person singular conjugation) rather than the -s conjugation used in Portugal. There's also the formation of the continuous tenses using the gerund form in Brazil (as in English) but with a + infinitive in Portugal. So "Você está falando Português" (PT-BR) but "Tu estás a falar Português" (PT-PT). There are other grammatical differences, such as the positioning of object pronouns.

Yeah, I forgot about the gerund form; I learned that difference of course years ago, but since I rarely read PT-PT, I don't really encounter it. And the times I have heard PT-PT, I've never noticed it being said, but that's more due partially to not understanding much of spoken PT-PT and partially to not remembering that difference, and so, not looking out for it within a sentence. I do recall something about the object pronouns as well (as you mentioned); I believe it's that PT-BR affixes them to the conjugated verb form, usually with a hyphen, while PT-PT positions them more similar to French?

I think knowing Spanish would be the biggest help, in terms of pronunciation. Whether or not Galician/Spanish phonology is closer to PT-BR or PT-PT is contentious, I've heard different Spanish speakers say that different Portugueses were easier. Personally, I think PT-BR and Galician/Spanish are slightly closer phonologically than PT-PT and Galician/Spanish, on account of the vowels.

Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to comment on that, but I spent time between my last reply and this one studying some Galician. I used a few sources, but for audio samples, I solely used this one. Prior to that, I used the Galician Omniglot page to get a sense of the phonetics. In listening to the audio sample, I could clearly hear the more distinct articulation of each phoneme I associate with Spanish. But I also could hear some Portuguese similarities for some words. One thing I found interesting is how word-final <n> becomes /ŋ/ before another word. (Compare the audio for non and non entendo here as an example.)

I just told you. Initial <ll> represents historical initial /l/. The spelling reflects the fact that in some varieties, it is [λ], but there are also affricate and fricative realisations. I think the official recommendation is to use the same cover spelling and let each speaker pronounce it according to the phonology of their native dialect, but as I said I'm not really au courant.

Haha, thanks! I didn't realize modern <ll> derived from historical initial /l/ since I assumed (based on Spanish and Galician) that <l> exists in Astur-Leonese and is probably used word-initially as well.

More than between, say, California English, Caribbean English, and Scottish Standard English?

I guess the answer would depend really on the speaker's background, in my opinion. As someone who's a native English speaker but a beginner L2 Portuguese speaker focusing on PT-BR, I would say more in general. But even my experiences have varied depending on (for the English comparison) how thick the Caribbean accent or Scottish accent was versus (for the Portuguese comparison) where the particular speaker was from and how fast they spoke.

One common general difference for Portuguese with phonology is that PT-PT speakers tend to say <s> as /ʃ/, and I believe this can happen word-initially, medially and finally. In Brazil, that pronunciation is generally considered a trait of those from Rio de Janeiro (and possibly the state of Rio as well, but I think the "Carioca" accent - which this pronunciation is associated with - is specific to those from the city of Rio). Because I'm aware of this phonological difference, when I listen to PT-PT speakers, it's a little easier to catch words that I'm used to hearing and saying with /s/. I still get tripped up though and sometimes it takes me a split second or two before I can map what I heard to the sound symbol I'm accustomed to.

I would imagine for someone like Osias, his answer to your comparison question would be quite different. Of course, for me too, with thick accents, I can still have a hard time. I recall there being this one Scottish gentleman I knew in AA with quite a thick accent despite I believe having lived in Canada for some time at least. He was probably in his 60s and while I don't know his full background, I imagine he'd probably been in Canada for at least 10 years when I saw him in the rooms. Anyway, every time he spoke, I had such a hard time understanding him! I even told him as much sometime in my first year of sobriety, and he responded that it was because of the 'mental fog' that generally people who first get sober experience (where you have an extremely hard time staying in the present moment and thus following along). However, even like 4-5 years later I still couldn't follow along fully. I did get better as both my mental fog cleared up and I got more used to his accent. But when he spoke, I had to pay close attention to understand the individual words and general gist, and if I ever lost my concentration (from like a stray thought, etc.), I was screwed! I rarely was able to "jump back in", though sometimes it happened. But thinking back now, much of my experience with this guy was similar to listening to someone speaking French or Spanish or Portuguese: I had to actively listen and analyze what he was saying, and then try to map the sounds for each "word" to what I knew as the sound symbol for that "word".

[Dormouse559]

While vous and nous can be indirect object pronouns, it's important to note that that is not what vous is doing in this email. Here, both instances of the second vous are reflexive pronouns, filling the role of direct objects.

D'accord et merci pour l'explication. Ça m'aide à mieux comprendre plus mieux* le deuxième cas de « vous ».

De rien !

*Est-ce que la phrase « plus meiux » signifie le superlatif? Si oui, je voulais à dire « comprendre plus ».

Non, « mieux » est le comparatif/superlatif de « bien », alors le mot porte déjà le sens de « plus ». Je crois que « mieux » est un meilleur choix que « plus » dans ce contexte.

[dEhiN]

D'accord et merci pour l'explication. Ça m'aide à mieux comprendre plus mieux* le deuxième cas de « vous ».

De rien !

*Est-ce que la phrase « plus meiux » signifie le superlatif? Si oui, je voulais à dire « comprendre plus ».

Non, « mieux » est le comparatif/superlatif de « bien », alors le mot porte déjà le sens de « plus ». Je crois que « mieux » est un meilleur choix que « plus » dans ce contexte.

Did I really combine le passé composé with l'imperatif?! Is there a difference between saying mieux comprendre and comprendre mieux? Or can mieux only be used before the noun? I know in Portuguese some adjectives also change the sentence meaning when placed before versus after the noun, but I don't remember now if French has that. (I think it does, but I've just been studying a bunch of Galician, so my brain is kind of fatigued right now!)