How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread (Jul 19) (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by emb@lemmy.world to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz

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[-] Ashtear@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

Interesting moment this week where I struggled with a grammar exercise and then realized upon review it wasn't the grammar, it was the vocab I was getting wrong.

It's starting to dawn on me, between this and feeling like I'm getting somewhere close to particle mastery, that I don't have much all that much farther to go on grammar learning. Stopped seeing new particle forms and verb conjugations a long time ago, there's far more grammar concepts behind me than there are ahead (assuming I don't do something wild like dive into Chinese literature study or old books). Maybe it's typical for reaching the end of the intermediate journey? Everything becomes vocab, vocab, vocab.

I might already be at the point where I need to start trusting my grammar forms over my vocab knowledge when a sentence doesn't make sense. I've been an Anki warrior for so long that it's a weird switch to flip in my head.

[-] dragontamer@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

From what I've seen in German C1 and C2 topics, the grammar and vocabulary merge at the highest levels.

In English for example, the word 'have' has an incredible number of structures. C1 and C2 really goes into very nuanced usage and no longer surface level.

In German, natural sounding sentences seemingly break B1 or B2 level rules in these special vocabulary forms (ie relearning that haben has a new grammar), and then learning these special grammars.

Or in other words: Natives don't follow the rules as written at B1 or B2. Learning the special exceptions to all kinds of words is C1+ level. So it's both vocabulary (knowing that words have new meanings), but ALSO grammar because it is complex enough to change the sentence structure.

[-] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago

Had really bad news break a few days ago, and bombed that day, but otherwise doing fine. 30-60 mins Japanese. Doing ever so more Spanish, maybe 20-30 mins a day. Lojban reading only doing a few pages a day. Oddly enough only missing a single day of Japanese, my reviews are peaking at 230 cards to do. I hate it when shit happens. Also to add to some details: the bad news was a few days ago, but I'll be facing the worst of it either tomorrow or the day after and then for a while afterwards, so this might be the last decent study session I'm able to do today for a while. At least until things settle down again. If they can to a degree where I can focus again at least.

Won't get into the bad news details, but wish me both luck and mercy.

[-] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Won't get into the bad news details, but wish me both luck and mercy.

Done! Make it through

[-] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Had a chance to visit a bigger public library a couple towns over. Found that they had some foreign language materials.

Read a couple Japanese children's books (translated from English), and some of a 10-minute Stories for 2nd Year Students. They were OK. Puts me off how much Kanji they don't use. Takes away valuable semantic clues. Also looked at a couple novels, which are just like, the most words everywhere. Nice to know they're there. Makes me appreciate the middle ground that Tadoku graded readers offer.

Working on building out an Anki deck for Thai alphabet. Found some on ankiWeb that seemed pretty good, but trying to add pictures and the example words. Also been doing Transparent Language Online, which is the learning app my library offers access to. Pretty good tool, especially for starting from scratch.

[-] Ashtear@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah, the one book my library system has in Japanese is kana-only. Oof.

I love Tadoku, I'll sing its praises all day. There's so many of them now, too.

[-] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

After reading most of the books on a website for the graded reading that I am, I ran out, so ended up getting a Satori free account. I think it's still higher level than what I currently am, even for beginner, but I can make out the text clear enough if not the words. I'd probably recommend giving that a try if you think you're able for it. The free account there's no real commitment to anything and you can test out yourself if its your thing or not.

Just a small recommendation.

[-] emb@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the rec! I have tried out Satori, I really like it and I need to use it more.

Some things bug me - I don't think they have a desktop version, there's a tiny bit of loading up front. But mainly, that's one I really wish I could buy a lifetime subscription to. Most are hard for me to justify, I think that one would be worth. Free is already really good though, lots there and I haven't really taken advantage, good reminder.

[-] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Oh that's weird, I have only used Satori through my desktop, but I guess it's because I'm using desktop mode through my Steam Deck or something? Or maybe not even that, but I've ended up managing to make it work on a desktop environment. Maybe they only recently made it accessible on desktops?

And yeah, I plan on running through as much Satori as I can for free before paying. I do believe in it's goal, and wouldn't mind paying earlier if I had the funds, but cash is cash and I'm sort of financially not in the best situation, so want to stall when I can.

[-] emb@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Ooh, hopefully I'm working from bad or outdated information. I'll look back into it.

[-] dragontamer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I've been complaining about the word list 1950 words long for a B1 level course book. I did some reading (in German) and apparently only 750-ish of those words (the ones in bold) are actually part of the B1 test.

As such, I've decided that while I'll translate all words... I'll only put the B1 test words inside of Anki. This should give me a good compromise between vocab drills and course book progress.

Last week was way too much vocabulary not enough course progress.