TAC 2021 - Rí

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

I have 3 target languages this year - Portuguese, Japanese and Irish. I may dabble in others, but those are the main ones I'm currently looking to make tangible progress in.


For Portuguese, I'm just going to continue to use it every day. I have a vague goal that I'd like to make a point of upping my YouTube watching time in it, and I would like to get better at passively understanding European Portuguese. I'd also like to read more in Portuguese - I had previously set a goal that every second book I read would be in Portuguese, but my interest in reading specific books and not wanting to delay reading them in order to intersperse Portuguese books took over. I might try to re-establish some kind of Portuguese quota on my reading again. I also have a list of around 6300 terms now that are vocabulary that I picked up through my life over the last 4 years, I probably know about a third of them by now anyway just through exposure, but it would be nice to try to master that list in some comprehensive way.


Japanese is currently my priority language. I'm refreshing my knowledge of kanji by going through James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. I've done this previously may years ago. I'm interested in mnemonics and visual memorisation techniques (such as the Memory Palace/Method of Loci technique), and I've always liked Heisig's approach. This time I'm trying to see if more concentrated and prolonged visualisation of the mnemonic imagery would be effective in cutting down on the amount of revision needed for retention. Instead of coming up with the quickest, easiest image that comes to mind and going with it, I'm doing them in two steps - in step one I go through all the kanji I need to do that day and just think about which stories would work best, without actually trying to visualise them too much, and I write them down. In step two, I go through each of those stories and spend at least 1 minute with my eyes closed focusing on visualising the story in as much detail as I can focusing on the important elements.
I've been going back through them for a week or so now, I'm up to kanji 1300 (out of 2200), but the earliest ones are the easiest as I still remember many of them form the first time around, so I can expect things to get much more difficult going forward. I'm trying to memorise 50 kanji a day, I expect that that is a bit optimistic to keep up at that pace, but I should be able to get near that at least.


I won't be studying Japanese and Irish in parallel (or at least, not to any great extent), so the first few months will heavily focus on Japanese to the near exclusion of Irish. What I have got planned for the short term for it is to go through Modern Irish by Micheál Ó Siadhail. It's not a course book or anything, but it's interesting. I'd like to try to apply some memorisation techniquest to the study of Irish, but I want to sharpen them a bit on Japanese first. I have some decent grammars to crack into when I'm ready. Ultimately, the real reason to study Irish this year, as with Japanese, is that I want to read the books I have in them and I want to bring my literacy up to a point where that won't be excruciating to actually do first.


I'm not studying English, but the flag here stands for reading (which will be happening mostly in English).
I got into the habit of reading much more over the last few months. It's taken a hit recently since Heisig is sucking up most of the time I was spending reading, but once I get that off my plate I want to get back to a decent amount of reading. I was getting through about a book and a half a week (obviously, some books are much bigger than others, but about 400 pages a week at least).

[dEhiN]

How did you amass a list of 6300 Portuguese words over the past 4 years? Did you meticulously write out each new Portuguese word you learned or came across? If so, kudos to you! I remember that a few years ago, you started in Portuguese because your girlfriend (at the time) was Brazilian. Are you two still together? If so, do you find that speaking to her in Portuguese helps any?

As for Japanese, are you on Google Hangouts? If so, Vijay, Meera, księżycowy and I have a Japanese Study Group going, which I could add you to.

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

How did you amass a list of 6300 Portuguese words over the past 4 years? Did you meticulously write out each new Portuguese word you learned or came across? If so, kudos to you!

Pretty much . I started when I was already at least B2 level, so the list doesn't contain much basic vocab. The reason I started it was because I had learned most of the vocab that you get exposed to in day-to-day conversation, but there are many thousands of words that are in the tricky stratum of vocab where they as a group are common enough that you'll encounter them reasonably frequently (and so need to know them), but are rare enough that you don't natually get enough exposure to any one of them to actually learn it. So to tackle that, I logged them all in a Google sheet via my phone and tried to artificially increase the frequency I was exposed to them (which is my fancy way of saying I studied them in Anki). Some of the terms are much more obscure than others, I just logged literally every new word or idiom I came across.

I remember that a few years ago, you started in Portuguese because your girlfriend (at the time) was Brazilian. Are you two still together? If so, do you find that speaking to her in Portuguese helps any?

Yes, we're married now. Speaking to her in Portuguese is the reason why I learned it in the first place - both the motive for learning it and the method of learning it. We speak only in Portuguese, I haven't spoken more than a few words to her in English in years.

As for Japanese, are you on Google Hangouts? If so, Vijay, Meera, księżycowy and I have a Japanese Study Group going, which I could add you to.

I used to use it for work, I don't use it on my personal account but I could always start . Do you guys to live calls or is in a message thing mainly?

[dEhiN]

Pretty much . I started when I was already at least B2 level, so the list doesn't contain much basic vocab. The reason I started it was because I had learned most of the vocab that you get exposed to in day-to-day conversation, but there are many thousands of words that are in the tricky stratum of vocab where they as a group are common enough that you'll encounter them reasonably frequently (and so need to know them), but are rare enough that you don't natually get enough exposure to any one of them to actually learn it. So to tackle that, I logged them all in a Google sheet via my phone and tried to artificially increase the frequency I was exposed to them (which is my fancy way of saying I studied them in Anki). Some of the terms are much more obscure than others, I just logged literally every new word or idiom I came across.

Man, I'm so jealous! I almost want to ask you to share that with me! But I feel that my level is too low to start tackling those words.

Yes, we're married now. Speaking to her in Portuguese is the reason why I learned it in the first place - both the motive for learning it and the method of learning it. We speak only in Portuguese, I haven't spoken more than a few words to her in English in years.

Congrats! So, I guess she knows English? Has she tried to learn any Irish? I think that's pretty awesome that you put in the effort to learn Portuguese! I had, have had and still have access to people who speak Tamil natively, but struggled to full take advantage of that in the past. Currently I've stopped actively trying to learn it, though I might pick it up again in the future. It can be hard though to push yourself to learn a language, even when you have incentives like a significant other speaks it, etc.

I used to use it for work, I don't use it on my personal account but I could always start . Do you guys to live calls or is in a message thing mainly?

Oh no, we just message. To be honest though, currently only księżycowy is actively studying it. He's got a language log on whatever HTLAL became about his Japanese progress. I believe he signed up for one of that forum's study challenges. It's called the 365 day challenge and it's basically to try and do 1 hour of study a day for 365 days. I actually thought of starting that up here, since even something like the Total Annihilation Challenge stopped being a challenge. At any rate, Meera has had personal struggles going on, and Vijay and I have been busy. If you're interested though, I could PM you details. I told księżycowy you might join, and I'm sure you two could chat in Japanese and keep each other motivated.

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

Man, I'm so jealous! I almost want to ask you to share that with me! But I feel that my level is too low to start tackling those words.

I've no problem sharing it, but it's a badly curated list - I can't guarentee the spellings are always 100% because sometimes I'm sloppy with the input, and it's not organised in any way, it's just the order I encountered the terms in. I think it probably has more value to me because I (hopefully) remember the context the words were used in so I can reinforce it. I think I'd recommemd you start to build your own list once you get a certain point.

Congrats! So, I guess she knows English? Has she tried to learn any Irish? I think that's pretty awesome that you put in the effort to learn Portuguese!

Yes, she speaks English. I think there were a few factors as to why I kept up the effort with Portuguese. I had dated other people before who spoke other languages and I had made some effort to learn their languages, but in all other cases I think the other person just wasn't that enthusiastic about my learning their language and got a bit impatient with how much more difficult conversation was when they had to humour my desire to learn their language. My wife was very encouraging and didn't mind me mangling Portuguese in the beginning. Another factor was the large number of Portuguese speakers here. All of my wife's friends are Brazilians, I work with Brazilians and Portuguese people, all the restaurants we go to are Brazilian restaurants, there are Brazilians in all the service industry positions in most shops you go into, you can go to nearly all-Brazilian nightclubs, and whenever we would go to a house party or a barbeque at a friend of hers' place, everyone would be speaking Portuguese all night, so I could either learn it and be able to join in (and be adored as the amazing Portuguese-speaking gringo) or be the awkward guy in the corner who people occassionally come over to practice their English on for a few minutes before going back to their friends (as I've seen happen with all the other Irish-Brazilian couples' Irish component at these kinds of parties). I decided it was a social obligation (as well as opportunity) to learn Portuguese. And once I got into the culture, I became a massive Brazeeaboo .

I had, have had and still have access to people who speak Tamil natively, but struggled to full take advantage of that in the past. Currently I've stopped actively trying to learn it, though I might pick it up again in the future. It can be hard though to push yourself to learn a language, even when you have incentives like a significant other speaks it, etc.

Yeah, like I said, I had partners who spoke other languages before and it didn't lead to me becoming fluent in their languages. I also still have access to people who speak Irish, but I don't avail of it as I should. The issue can be one of not wanting to change the existing relationship you have with someone - if I have a certain rapport with a friend of mine, I probably don't want to have weird, awkward learnery type conversations with them. There's also the thing where I know that all Irish speakers are also fluent (usually native) English speakers, so it seems "forced" to speak Irish (which it is, but I should just get over that). How far did you get with Tamil before, by the way?

Oh no, we just message. To be honest though, currently only księżycowy is actively studying it. He's got a language log on whatever HTLAL became about his Japanese progress. I believe he signed up for one of that forum's study challenges. It's called the 365 day challenge and it's basically to try and do 1 hour of study a day for 365 days. I actually thought of starting that up here, since even something like the Total Annihilation Challenge stopped being a challenge. At any rate, Meera has had personal struggles going on, and Vijay and I have been busy. If you're interested though, I could PM you details. I told księżycowy you might join, and I'm sure you two could chat in Japanese and keep each other motivated.

Cool! I'm going to follow my own study regime I think, but I'd be happy to join for the motivation and sporadic practice

[księżycowy]

It kinda evolved into a self-paced study group, so no worries about that. We were planning to work from the same source material, but I'm open to anything personally. Naturally, I can't speak for the others. At this particular point I see it as a way to motivate each other and ask questions and shit. You're more than welcome to join if you want.

My current log is on LLORG. Here's the current link, if anyone is interested: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11281

It's mostly about Japanese and Bungo at this point.

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

You're more than welcome to join if you want.

Thanks

My current log is on LLORG. Here's the current link, if anyone is interested: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11281

I didn't know about that site, interesting!

Has she tried to learn any Irish?

I realised I didn't answer your question. She likes languages, but she's not quite a UL-level language nerd, so Irish might be a tall order. That said, she did do (and I think still does occasionally) Irish on duolingo, but she can still only say a few phrases like "Is bean mé", "Conas atá tú? Tá mé go maith, go raibh maith agat". She knows a bunch or random nouns that she'll sometimes just say out of nowhere because she remembered it and liked the way it sounds. I actually should put another Irish language goal up there - to start picking certain phrases we usually say to each other during the day and translate them into Irish and get her to start using them. Like, I'll refuse to do the dishes unless she says "Ar féidir leat na soithí a ní, más é do thoil é?".

[dEhiN]

It's funny, the more I watch that Try channel, the more I find myself getting interested in Irish. I mean, the channel is in English, but they'll say things like sláinte when trying drinks. Speaking of sláinte, why do both the /s/ and /l/ in the IPA on Wiktionary have [s^ɤ] and [l^ɤ]? Is that just the way /s/ and /l/ are pronounced in Irish, with velarization? Or is there something in the orthography that I'm not seeing but dictates velarization of a consonant?

As for your experiences with learning Portuguese, I totally get all that you shared. It definitely does help having a partner (or friend, etc.) that is interested in helping you learn their language. They'll display more patience with your mistakes and enthusiasm for you to try stuff, even if it's slow going at first. During the years I was involved with language exchanges, I became good friends with several people who started off as language exchange partners. Because the initial attempts at language exchange generally involved the other person being high intermediate or low advanced in English and me being mostly a beginner in the other language, invariably the friendship became one of us basically interacting in English. As for my family, yeah, I'm used to interacting in English and the thought of changing the dynamic is weird and a little off-putting. I know my parents, for example, are perfectly happy to converse in Tamil, and in the past have made attempts to do so. But I never really kept pushing myself to discourse in Tamil, and so we naturally switched back to English.

In one sense I got a little far with my Tamil, but in another sense I didn't get that far. Last year I started doing some weekly Tamil lessons with an online language acquaintance who's actually a Tamil teacher in India. But then I stopped them after only a few lessons because my partner and I had to move and I felt I couldn't keep up the lessons while focusing on the move. When I was still using Anki (I think I stopped sometimes in 2017?), I had a Tamil deck that consisted of 607 cards with a mix of vocab and grammar cards. I also, over the years, went through various Tamil resources either on my own or with a study group here on UL. So, in one sense, I have learned about the different cases in Tamil and their endings, the rules for affixation, the different tense affixes for each verb group (as well as quite a few different verbs from each group). But the only stuff I really remember are some rules for affixation, the present tense affix as well as the person verb affixes. I could probably recognize a few more things, like some Tamil case endings. I think in the end, the lack of active production and utilisation is what did me in - it's hard to remember things you're learning when you aren't actively using it.

[księżycowy]

It's funny, the more I watch that Try channel, the more I find myself getting interested in Irish. I mean, the channel is in English, but they'll say things like sláinte when trying drinks. Speaking of sláinte, why do both the /s/ and /l/ in the IPA on Wiktionary have [s^ɤ] and [l^ɤ]? Is that just the way /s/ and /l/ are pronounced in Irish, with velarization? Or is there something in the orthography that I'm not seeing but dictates velarization of a consonant?

I'm hardly an expert, so hopefully someone can add on to what I'm about to say.

[^ɤ] is a very typical way of representing in IPA what are usually called "broad" consonants in Irish. I'm not sure how much you remember from the study group (I think you were a part of it?), but Irish has broad and slender consonants. Slender consonants are those that have an <i> or <e> after them.

[dEhiN]

It's funny, the more I watch that Try channel, the more I find myself getting interested in Irish. I mean, the channel is in English, but they'll say things like sláinte when trying drinks. Speaking of sláinte, why do both the /s/ and /l/ in the IPA on Wiktionary have [s^ɤ] and [l^ɤ]? Is that just the way /s/ and /l/ are pronounced in Irish, with velarization? Or is there something in the orthography that I'm not seeing but dictates velarization of a consonant?

I'm hardly an expert, so hopefully someone can add on to what I'm about to say.

[^ɤ] is a very typical way of representing in IPA what are usually called "broad" consonants in Irish. I'm not sure how much you remember from the study group (I think you were a part of it?), but Irish has broad and slender consonants. Slender consonants are those that have an <i> or <e> after them.

I was part of the study group, though I barely recall anything. When I was looking up a few Irish words on Wiktionary, I remembered about lenition and stuff from seeing it on Wiktionary, but I only remembered that Irish has that wherein some words change their spelling. But I forget in what contexts. Now that you mention broad and slender consonants, I remember those terms as well, but again, I don't remember what exactly they mean. So, then [^ɤ] doesn't signify actual velarization of the consonant but just whether it's a broad or slender consonant? If slender consonants are those that have a <i> or <e> after, can I assume that broad consonants are everything else? Also, while I imagine dialectal pronunciation plays a big factor, in general, is there a difference between how a broad and slender consonant is pronounced? And is [^j] the notation for slender consonants? Because I think the full IPA for sláinte was [s^ɤ̪l^ɤɑːn̠^jt^jə].

ETA: So, in looking up the IPA for sláinte on Wiktionary, I found this WIktionary appendix page on Irish pronunciation which answers most of my questions. There seems to be a difference for some consonants in the broad vs slender variants, but not for others. I'm curious if retracted n is supposed to be just a retraction from dental n, making it basically just an alveolar n, or more akin to a post-alveolar n? After all, there is also [n^ɤ] and [n^j], though note 5 on that appendix page mentions how most Irish dialects don't maintain four distinct "n" sounds, making me think that retracted n was initially different from alveolar n?

[księżycowy]

I'm not sure what you mean by:

There seems to be a difference for some consonants in the broad vs slender variants, but not for others.

I'm hoping you saw notes 1 & 2 at the bottom either way.

[dEhiN]

I'm not sure what you mean by:

There seems to be a difference for some consonants in the broad vs slender variants, but not for others.

I'm hoping you saw notes 1 & 2 at the bottom either way.

I didn't but thanks for pointing them out. What I meant was that some broad/slender variants actually caused a completely different consonantal sound. I guess in general though, the consonants are co-articulated. That's going to be hard to get used and even hard to learn to hear the differences!

[linguoboy]

What I meant was that some broad/slender variants actually caused a completely different consonantal sound.

That's really more an artifact of IPA transcription than anything else. Your tongue always shifts position between slender and broad versions of the "same consonant" whether or not this leads to IPA representing the contrast with completely distinct symbols or the same symbol but with different diacritics.

[dEhiN]

That's really more an artifact of IPA transcription than anything else. Your tongue always shifts position between slender and broad versions of the "same consonant" whether or not this leads to IPA representing the contrast with completely distinct symbols or the same symbol but with different diacritics.

Ok, thanks! I'm glad you weighed in because I know you've studied Irish a lot. (I was actually hoping you'd weigh in at some point!)

Do you know how much of a co-articulation happens with the broad and slender variants? What I mean is that the Wiktionary appendix notes 1 and 2 use the phrase "raised toward", but don't specify how much. Are we talking full co-articulation - so [b^ɤ] would have a stop at both the lips and velum while [b^j] would have a stop at the lips and hard palate? Or is it more like enough of a raising to colour the consonantal sound? Note 1 on that appendix page uses English dark l as an example of velarization, but I can't quite tell how far raised my tongue is for full.

[linguoboy]

Are we talking full co-articulation - so [b^ɤ] would have a stop at both the lips and velum while [b^j] would have a stop at the lips and hard palate?

No, none of the stops show two points of contact. (If they did, the IPA diacritics would be different--e.g. [ɡ͡b] instead of [b^ɤ].)

Or is it more like enough of a raising to colour the consonantal sound? Note 1 on that appendix page uses English dark l as an example of velarization, but I can't quite tell how far raised my tongue is for full.

In many cases--but particularly with the labials--I hear the colouring more on the adjoining vowels than in the release of the consonant itself. That is, velarisation before front vowels often manifests as an onglide [ɰ] quite apart from any effect it has on the articulation of the consonant itself. After labials, it may be rounded to [w]--though that transcription is misleading because the glides are more fleeting than a full-fledged [w] in English. Similarly, palatalisation produces a front glide--either an onglide or an offglide depending on whether the slender consonant precedes or follows.

Depending on the speaker, I think starting out with a full-fledged glide and then trying to dial it back can be a better way to learn to produce the distinction. For you, with your Dravidian background, I might recommend focussing primarily on the dental/alveolar distinction in the "dental" series and only secondarily on the velarisation and palatalisation of those consonants.

[Car]

Oh no, we just message. To be honest though, currently only księżycowy is actively studying it. He's got a language log on whatever HTLAL became about his Japanese progress. I believe he signed up for one of that forum's study challenges. It's called the 365 day challenge and it's basically to try and do 1 hour of study a day for 365 days. I actually thought of starting that up here, since even something like the Total Annihilation Challenge stopped being a challenge. At any rate, Meera has had personal struggles going on, and Vijay and I have been busy. If you're interested though, I could PM you details. I told księżycowy you might join, and I'm sure you two could chat in Japanese and keep each other motivated.

Cool! I'm going to follow my own study regime I think, but I'd be happy to join for the motivation and sporadic practice

I had to think of you when I came across this on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/ ... e_lessons/

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

First, a little update on Japanese progress:


I've got up to kanji no. 1500 now, which is a bit slower than I thought. I felt uncomfortable with my grip on the kanji I had learned form about 1000 onwards, so my plan is to pause here at 1500 for a week, revise the 500 from 1000 to 1500 heavily every day and hopefully in a week's time I'll feel a little more confident to continue.
I also built my first ever Android app, and it's a Japanese dictionary (of sorts)! I wanted something that would work in conjunction with the Heisig method specifically. The issue I had was kanji input - when you read something in Japanese, you might come across a kanji compound word that you don't know, and thus had to look it up. For example, let's say you see 政治 in a physical book and you want to know what it means:
If you know each of these kanji from other words they are in and you know the pronunciation they have in those words, you can probably take a guess at how it's pronounced, and you could type that into a dictionary app to find the entry. Even if you are wrong about the pronunciation in this specific word, if you know words that contain these characters, you can type the words containing them using a Japanese keyboard and just delete the additional characters.
However, if you don't know the word, don't know any words containing these characters and don't know how they are pronounced, you'll have to input the kanji individually. You can do this by composing them for their radicals, but usually that only works to give you a (hopefully) short list of characters you can select from.
But in my case, I have a keyword associated with each kanji due to the way the Heisig method teaches them, so when I see 政治 I think "politics-reign". So for me, the ideal input method would be one where I can simply type "politics" and then "reign" and have it look for a compound with the two kanji with those associated Heisig keywords. So that's exactly what I built. As soon as I start typing, a filtered list of all the Heisig kanji keywords starts appearing below the search bar, it rarely takes more than 3 or 4 letters into the keyword before the one I'm looking for is visible, then I tap on it and it inputs the kanji to a text field, copies the text to my clipboard (in case I want to navigate to another app and paste it), clears the search bar for my next kanji and pulls up any definition it can find for whatever the text is in the EJDICT open source dictionary file (which has over 190,000 entries!). I've been reading a manga I've had for years (but never read until now) called 日本人の知らない日本語 ("The Japanese that even Japanese people don't know") about a Japanese language teacher and her amusing anecdotes with students, and I've been using the app, and it's working out great!


I've subscribed to Folha de São Paulo, which is a big, left-leaning Brazilian newspaper. With the current exchange rate between Euro and Real, it's really not very expensive for the first few months anyway. I'll see how much use I get out of it, I'm going to try to at least read 1 article a day. It's really less about the Portuguese practice than about staying informed. I think the writing in FSP is quite good, I guess I'll have more of an opinion once I've read it for a few weeks at least.

Is that just the way /s/ and /l/ are pronounced in Irish, with velarization? Or is there something in the orthography that I'm not seeing but dictates velarization of a consonant?

All consonants in Irish are either "broad" (velarised) or "slender" (palatalised). I'm not 100% sure if they are all literally velarised or palatalised in the strict sense, as I'm not totally sure of the narrow definitions of some of those terms, but the main thing is that there is a distinction between the two types for each consonant. The orthography indicates this by the surrounding vowels - if a consonant or consonant cluster is followed and/or preceded by an <a>, <o> or <u> then it's "broad", otherwise it's "slender".

Because the initial attempts at language exchange generally involved the other person being high intermediate or low advanced in English and me being mostly a beginner in the other language, invariably the friendship became one of us basically interacting in English.

This is kind of the curse of speaking English natively - we get so little exposure to other languages by comparison to the amount of exposure to English almost all of our non-native English-speaking interlocutors get that it's pretty much always the case that they speak English better than we speak their languages, and that makes English the natural language to communicate in as it's the one communication flows most easily in. If you, as the English speaker, insist on speaking the other language (which already assumes you have the willpower to keep that effort up), you're basically asserting your desire to practice their language over communicative facility, which is only really acceptable to most people in a classroom or a specific language exchange where everyone has agreed to allow everyone else practice. In most real-world situations (which is where most language learning actually takes place), people just want you to speak in whatever language gets the job done most efficiently. It's a catch-22.

In one sense I got a little far with my Tamil, but in another sense I didn't get that far. [...] I think in the end, the lack of active production and utilisation is what did me in - it's hard to remember things you're learning when you aren't actively using it.

Sounds a lot like me with Irish. I still see a fair bit of Irish in my Facebook feed, and I do read it when I see it, so my passive reading skills are still ok. I think I can remember most of the grammar, but what has left me is the active command of the vocabulary. I'm curious now about how Dravidian languages work, I'm tempted to dabble... but not yet. Maybe I'll put a course book on Tamil or Malayalam on my reading list though. I'm open to recommendations if you have any!

I had to think of you when I came across this on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/ ... e_lessons/

Aw, thanks for thinking of me! I bet she is absolutely inundated with requests for lessons though. My goal for the moment is to plough on with the kanji, get myself up to reading level and then let loose on the books and manga I've got lying around. Once I've worked my way through some of that, I might find the motivation to take it to the conversational level again.

[księżycowy]

Oh gawd. Vijay will be all over you once he catches wind....

[vijayjohn]

Wtf are you talking about?

[księżycowy]

He said the M- word.