Saim's log 2017-2019

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby eskandar » 2018-12-13, 6:32

Saim wrote:At some point I should watch that Levantine series that's on Netflix.

Maybe I'll watch that after I finish Fauda. (If you can tune out the atrocious racism and Zionism of the show, it's a fairly unique chance to practice Levantine Arabic and Hebrew at the same time, which is fun.)

I could've sworn I'd talked about her before on this forum! I'd just never had the time/motivation to use these videos much, but now I feel like this is just the sort of thing I can repeatedly listen to without having to look at the dictionary since the translation is already there, so it's not about fully decyphering an incomprehensible text as it normally is with Arabic (at least for me with my current level).

You said it - that's exactly what appeals to me as well. Until now, learning colloquial Arabic felt like too much effort, but this is perfect for a bit of productive study each day, which suits my learning style very well. It's given me motivation to put some time into tackling Levantine (and the fact that it's in Palestinian, which is the exact dialect I'm trying to learn - نورٌ على نور !)
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby voron » 2018-12-13, 12:47

Saim wrote:
الهيبة.

Looks great, thanks for the recommendation!
And wow I googled around a bit, and found quite a number of films and series in Arabic on Netflix.
There is this:
http://cairoscene.com/LifeStyle/Netflix-MENA-Ramadan

And this stand-up comedy show, besides being in Levantine Arabic, even has subtitles in Levantine!
https://www.netflix.com/title/80203919

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2018-12-13, 14:51

eskandar wrote:Maybe I'll watch that after I finish Fauda. (If you can tune out the atrocious racism and Zionism of the show, it's a fairly unique chance to practice Levantine Arabic and Hebrew at the same time, which is fun.)


I might watch it once I'm a bit better at Hebrew (could be fun to watch the Arabic bits with Hebrew subtitles). A friend of mine said it's "not bad for an Israeli series", although I don't think many series on "counterterrorism" are going to have particularly good politics.

voron wrote:http://cairoscene.com/LifeStyle/Netflix-MENA-Ramadan


Nice, I bookmarked أنشالله أستفدت, فيلم كتير كبير and Speed Sisters. Actually I've already seen some of Speed Sisters, I think it was on TV once but I don't remember where.

And this stand-up comedy show, besides being in Levantine Arabic, even has subtitles in Levantine!
https://www.netflix.com/title/80203919


The link doesn't work for me. Maybe it isn't available in Poland. What's the title of the show?

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby voron » 2018-12-13, 15:47

Saim wrote:The link doesn't work for me. Maybe it isn't available in Poland. What's the title of the show?

It's this show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2I3kmUHtuI

Adel Karam - Live from Beirut

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby eskandar » 2018-12-14, 0:35

Saim wrote:I might watch it once I'm a bit better at Hebrew (could be fun to watch the Arabic bits with Hebrew subtitles). A friend of mine said it's "not bad for an Israeli series", although I don't think many series on "counterterrorism" are going to have particularly good politics.

Yeah, it might not be as bad as other Israeli series (I have no idea-- the others I've watched were totally apolitical) but that's probably setting the bar pretty damn low :lol:
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2018-12-14, 16:57

I think I'm starting to come to a good balance between Anki and other activities. For a while I kept trying to add a massive amount of cards but I think that takes too much attention away from more low-effort things that I can do repeatedly or more often, as well other high-effort activities like transcription exercises, translation exercises or conversations with a tutor.

I'll try and make sentence cards for these four languages, where I still need to learn a massive amount of word roots, but I will not try and make Anki my main source of learning or do something silly like add dozens of cards a week:

-Modern Standard Arabic
-Hebrew
-Urdu
-Turkish

For Hungarian, I will also add sentence cards based on vocabulary in class. I'm attending a class called słownictwo węgierskie specjalistyczne "Hungarian specialised vocabulary" (it's not as scary as it sounds, we just spend more time talking about specific topics) as a wolny słuchacz and the vocabulary load is quite high so I should make sure to do some SRS for that.

For Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages I will avoid Anki completely. I might also remove the German cards I've made so far eventually.

I will keep chopping up the dialogues from Le chinois sans peine and adding them to Anki. I'd like to try a similar approach for Syrian Arabic but I'm not sure what textbook to use; Syrian Colloquial Arabic: A Functional Course is annoying to work with because it has its audio files organised by chapter rather than by dialogue or exercise, so I can never be bothered to actually add cards. Routledge Colloquial Arabic (Levantine) has quite a lot of dialogues and the audio is separated by dialogue I think, but it's not in any specific Levantine dialect as far as I can remember, but rather some sort of white dialect. Maybe I shouldn't bother, at most adding example sentences from Living Arabic to Anki. :hmm:

To recap --
5 cards a week (ur) (he) (ar-MSA) (tr)
0 cards (de) (fr) (pt) (ru) (sk) etc.
Cards for most words from class (hu)
100% Anki work (zh.Hans) [whenever I want, eventually I'll finish the book, who cares when]
? - (ar-apc)

voron wrote:It's this show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2I3kmUHtuI

Adel Karam - Live from Beirut


Dzięki za link. Ten program faktycznie nie jest dostępny w Polsce, więc nie będę mógł używać napisów po lewantyńsku. :cry:

eskandar wrote:Yeah, it might not be as bad as other Israeli series (I have no idea-- the others I've watched were totally apolitical) but that's probably setting the bar pretty damn low :lol:


Which other shows have you watched?
Last edited by Saim on 2018-12-21, 13:20, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby voron » 2018-12-14, 22:59

Saim wrote:
voron wrote:That girl makes me super envious.


That she's a home-language speaker of Hebrew who then studied Arabic at university? :P

Also because of this:
https://youtu.be/RPw9uvPXiZw

(and see comments below the video).

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby eskandar » 2018-12-15, 0:55

Saim wrote:Which other shows have you watched?

Srugim, which as the title implies is about dati-le'umi settlers. Palestinians aren't portrayed negatively because they aren't portrayed at all; they, and the occupation, are completely absent in the show. This was the best show I watched for the kind of everyday Hebrew I'm trying to learn, since it's basically a soap opera (albeit a relatively mellow one) and therefore all about everyday situations. Warning: me'od sakhi. I also watched the first season of Shtisel, about ultra-Orthodox Jews, which was the only season I could find with English subs. Highly recommended as it was actually very well-written and acted. Not as useful as Srugim for me since there's a lot of Yiddish dialogue, but much more enjoyable to watch. Now that I've finished Fauda, I should find a new Israeli show to watch. Any recommendations for something that has English subs?
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Car » 2018-12-15, 10:40

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners ... (TV_series) ? It was shown in a couple of countries. There was another series I watched a season of, but I can't think of the name right now.
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby eskandar » 2018-12-15, 23:36

Could be good for practicing Hebrew and Arabic at the same time again, though I don't know if I can stomach another show like this.
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Luís » 2018-12-16, 10:59

eskandar wrote:I've finished Fauda, I should find a new Israeli show to watch. Any recommendations for something that has English subs?


Hostages is not bad and is available on Netflix.

I also enjoyed Mossad 101, but I'm not sure if that's too "political" for you.
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby voron » 2018-12-16, 11:07

I liked the recent film The Angel which has parts in Hebrew and Arabic. It's also available on Netflix.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Car » 2018-12-16, 12:23

Luís wrote:
eskandar wrote:I've finished Fauda, I should find a new Israeli show to watch. Any recommendations for something that has English subs?


Hostages is not bad and is available on Netflix.

That's the one I had in mind. But I think in both cases, I actually only watched season 1.

There's also https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6575296/, but I haven't watched that, only noticed that it's shown on TV elsewhere, so it shouldn't be too bad.

I found this article while searching for it: https://www.timesofisrael.com/6-israeli ... watch-now/
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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2018-12-20, 15:25

Saim wrote:I will keep chopping up the dialogues from Le chinois sans peine and adding them to Anki. I'd like to try a similar approach for Syrian Arabic but I'm not sure what textbook to use; Syrian Colloquial Arabic: A Functional Course is annoying to work with because it has its audio files organised by chapter rather than by dialogue or exercise, so I can never bother to actually add cards. Routledge Colloquial Arabic (Levantine) has quite a lot of dialogues and the audio is separated by dialogue I think, but it's not in any specific Levantine dialect as far as I can remember, but rather some sort of white dialect. Maybe I shouldn't bother, at most adding example sentences from Living Arabic to Anki. :hmm:


Probably not worth it at this point, I just really dread opening the Syrian Colloquial Arabic textbook again; constantly using the same beginner-level resources actually takes away my motivation to learn Arabic. Since one of the main reasons I want to learn vernacular Arabic is to understand music, I'll just add songs that have already been translated to Anki (and there's quite a lot out there that's already been translated, even rap songs). I find I already sing the two Mashrou' Leila (مشروع ليلى) songs I've added to Anki to myself at random times and remember the meanings of the lyrics perfectly, so adding more of them could be a pretty fun way to keep learning.

For example, today I went through the song Roman (رومان) by مشروع ليلى, and it took me about an hour and a half. I made 8 cards from the lyrics themselves, and 18 cards from Living Arabic sentences. As far as I can tell all of their songs have English translations on their channel, and since I adore pretty much everything they've made I can probably actually learn quiet a lot just by going through their songs this way and then looking up further example sentences for some of the vocabulary.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby voron » 2018-12-20, 15:43

Saim wrote:I'd like to try a similar approach for Syrian Arabic but I'm not sure what textbook to use

You can try using DLIFLC or Langmedia lessons to create Anki cards. I did it with DLIFLC (but it didn't work too well for me, to be honest. Their texts are boring).

Since one of the main reasons I want to learn vernacular Arabic is to understand music, I'll just add songs that have already been translated to Anki

I happen to find many more Egyptian songs that I like than Levantine ones, and a lot of them, including rap songs, are subtitled. Like this one which I just love, and it has subtitles in both Egyptian and English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJWyRs-8xlE

(This channel has many more subtitled music videos, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYmjRH ... rBjClZLnDw)

The Levantine songs that I come across are mostly like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEKLI3sj9cQ

They have a nice melody and stuff, but they are not really my thing.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2018-12-22, 18:33

Thanks for the recommendations! I think I'll stick to songs for the time being but if I get sick of that I might try LangMedia.

Polish

I've started using Wikisłownik (pl.wiktionary.org) as my go-to dictionary. It's quite comprehensive and often gives lots of synonyms, pictures, grammar and even translations to other languages. I find it much more useful than the PWN dictionary (sjp.pwn.pl).

The English Wiktionary, on the other hand, is surprisingly incomplete when it comes to Polish. It's much, much better for Serbo-Croatian for whatever reason.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2018-12-23, 9:29

Basque

I've decided to keep plodding through Basque. I probably won't do it every week, but when I do do some Basque I'll make sure to split it into two sessions:

Session 1: Cut up and add dialogues from Assimil: Le basque unifié to Anki.
Session 2: Note down new words when going through the cards. Look up new words and find example sentences. Then find example sentences for other new vocabulary found in these example sentences.

For part 2 I'll mostly be using the elhuyar dictionary (http://www.euskadi.eus/elhuyar-hiztegia/) for example sentences; it has pretty good example sentences for most words really. If I don't find a good example sentence for a word I really in elhuyar want to add to my deck I'll use glosbe as a last resort.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2019-01-06, 20:23

Punjabi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeCal-gOpvM

I understood almost all of this video! Sure, they use a lot of English, but I was shocked by how easily I understood the bits I did understand; I remember how torturous it was to learn Punjabi morphology since there were no easy to consult reference works on it, and now it's all completely obvious and I could even transcribe most of this video in Shahmukhi if I wanted to. I'm happy my Punjabi hasn't completely disappeared.

Another thing that's surprised me lately is that when I've been talking to myself in Punjabi I've been able to produce the tones. When did this happen? :para: I think one of the main things that prevented people from taking me seriously as a Punjabi-user in Pakistan was my accent, so I think if I keep putting effort into expanding my Urdu vocabulary and following Urdu media I'll be able to reactivate and use Punjabi next time I visit Pakistan (who knows when that'll be but it's still motivating to think about!).

It's fun how listening comprehension just kind of clicks at a certain point and how with related languages even if you abandon them and keep studying another member of the family, when you go back to them you understand even more. The longer I do this the more I'm convinced that a primarily input-based approach is the way to go.

Arabic, Turkish

I'm going to start going through the Glossika courses for Turkish (GMS2), Egyptian Arabic (GMS1) and MSA (GMS1). I'll add any sentences with vocabulary I didn't recognise to Anki as well as finding other example sentences. The goal of this isn't to memorise all the sentences in the course, but to make all of them transparent so I can later go through the course without the pdf and focus on pronunciation, grammar and automaticity rather than vocabulary and comprehension (which is how it helped me with French and Hungarian; I find it too boring to work with for non-transparent languages).

Since going back and forth between Urdu and Punjabi doesn't seem to have hurt my knowledge of those languages, I'm not really going to make any clear differentiation between Egyptian, Levantine and MSA for the time being. I don't have any short-term goal to speak any sort of Arabic, I'm only practicing comprehension and vocabulary, so I don't care at all if I end up mixing them up.

(I have a similar attitude regarding German and Dutch as well -- for a long time I put off German to avoid destroying my Dutch, but now I've found that after putting lots of effort into German I actually understand a bit more Dutch than I used to. So for the time being I'm going to keep reading German texts on lingq, occasionally listen to Euronews and other German media, and if I ever want to go back to Dutch it'll be easier after having spent time with German.)

Mandarin

I made the mistake of adding two entire Assimil lessons to my Anki deck in a single day. Those cards ended up being torture and I feel like it took me longer for me to learn them than if I had spaced them out. It's probably better to add fewer cards more often than more cards in big bursts, especially now that the lessons are getting more complicated. So far I have 165 cards and am up to lesson 16.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby Saim » 2019-01-17, 13:27

Spanish

I passed the DELE C2 exam! I got the highest mark possible for the spoken section, which is nice (I was certain I would accidentally say something in Catalan or something and get docked a gazillion marks). I even got a fairly high grade for the written part, which surprised me; I was worried about that part of the exam because I got confused and started writing one of the texts on the wrong paper and had to strike through it all and write it all again, and I only just managed to write all three texts in time and had no time to check them for mistakes.

The fact that I not only passed, but got rather high marks, has reaffirmed me in my knowledge of Polish (in comparison, my Polish isn't that much worse than my Spanish). Last year I was going to take the C2 exam, and I was thinking I probably wouldn't pass. I didn't end up signing up because I didn't realise I had to pay immediately after sending the application form otherwise they would throw it out. That's probably for the best because I had bronchitis for a while so I dunno if I could've managed taking the train to Warsaw for it (they didn't do the C2 exam in Poznań last year).

Unfortunately the Polish C2 exam is only available in the third exam session in the year, which I won't be here for. The first session is already full in Poznań (when did that happen? I need to pay more attention to these things), so I think I'll sign up for the C1 exam in the second session. The only thing is that at that time I'll have to be finishing of my MA thesis... it's also a shame I'm not doing the C2 exam since I'm already paying so much (god are these exams expensive!), although I guess it's alright to play it safe with the C1 one because it's unlikely I'd fail it, and I guess it's not that different from a CV perspective, especially since it's not my only foreign language.

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Re: Saim's log 2017-2018

Postby voron » 2019-01-17, 14:01

That's very cool Saim, congratulations!

Do you have a certificate for Serbian?

Also, what were the writing section and the speaking section of the Spanish exam about?


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