Had to commute a lot this week, so got at least 30 minutes of Japanese podcast time in on those days. It’s still more in the “pick out words and phrases” mode for me than really understanding the whole thing. But still good, definitely can feel slight gradual improvements as I pick up little things.
Didn’t push as hard on new flashcards this week tho, due to work being busy. At least I’m not falling behind on reviews.
That’s pretty good for a busy week, well done keeping up the habit.
I’m in the middle of changing jobs so I’ve been falling behind with German… But promise to pick up the speed in a couple of weeks.
I’m not sure how I am these days. I mean I’m studying, but I don’t feel like I’m doing enough still. Mind, I’ve been only doing 30 minutes a day of Japanese and 30 mins of Spanish, so it’s not my usual hour each, which is probably why it doesn’t feel as fleshed out as I want. I’m sort of not exactly in the right spirits where I can feel like I’m on top of things yet, despite the efforts.
Also, really happy I’m managing the 30 minutes of maths. I had a test today and 70% passed it, with 3 of the questions I had no idea what they were talking about, so I’ll take what I get.
Next to this, still haven’t touched my Irish. Again it’s sort of hard to start it when what you are given are very meager learning tools for the language. Books only work so well without the spoken word, and apps that do spoken word, have terrible learning practices, so it’s bad on both ends. I keep ranting about this because it’s constantly a source of contention for me. I learn Japanese on MaruMori, the SRS they have on that app makes all the other apps I’ve used be put to shame, including Anki. I seriously wish there was more out there like MM but for other languages. Literally feel so spoilt using this for Japanese. It’s not perfect still, definitely way not enough practice lessons for grammar and such. And their streak system is very unforgiving. But somehow I’ve only missed a single day in the past 340+ days, so I have that going for me.
I’m hyped to learn more, it’s just, when push comes to shove, it’s hard to have the energy in me to do more, I guess? It’s hard knowing what my problem is exactly. Just off I guess.
I think that amount of daily studying is admirable, well done keeping that up for so long (even though you see this as too little). Hope you start feeling better soon to get to the amount you want to.
Also: math is super gratifying, I know! You can see results in learning quite fast and continously. Wish languages would be like that…
I wish I could help you with Irish resources :/ are there no official learning materials from Ireland? Maybe a study book + audiofiles to push it forward?
Honestly, I think one thing nailing me down lately is sleep. As soon as I get on track of that, and end up being less tired in the day, I’ll be able for more. Body needs adjusting.
Did a 50 minute lesson of math yesterday, I’m enjoying maths more than I have done when I was in school. The test I did the other day, I’d use to crack down and melt from anxiety in attempting tests years ago. But that’s becoming less and less of an issue the more I expose myself to questions and tests, the less the punch they have. Still not over the fear fully yet, but doing a lot better. Also mind, I’m pushing myself into this direction too, with no other assistance from anyone else so the climb is going to be harder. But more worth it in the end I hope.
There’s books with audio, but I lost my credentials to download them again, so all I have is the book. Also it doesn’t come with any workbook, and the online resources for the book cost a lot per month. I’d probably pay for that in the next coming while, once I settle into more of a deeper and more structured routine. Again Irish is the hardest for me to get into, so again, waiting until I’m more prepared to chew into it.
Same with the sleep. Last few nights haven’t slept enough and haven’t done any learning since then…
Math is so much more fun after school lol. I think for me it was bad due to bad teachers. I had one good teacher and really liked math with that teacher.
Damn. I agree maybe let irish be for now and get back into it once you have more energy and time to spare. Learning should be fun not forced.
Sorry to hear, energy levels are still hard to get right despite maturing/aging, it’s one of those things you can’t really ever get right 100% of the time, even up till your 70s. Hope you feel well enough to start again soon.
A good teacher can make a huge difference in your life. I had okay teachers but none of them made me go mad for learning like I am now for languages and such. I think some random person on IRC did that and I don’t even know their name anymore.
You get that study high after a good day, it’s very worthwhile just for that, lol.
Thank you, I hope so too! You are right I thought this wouldn’t be a problem anymore as I age but apparently I still sleep too little too often lol.
Ha I can relate with a random person getting me all excited about learning! A good teacher that gets you all excited can also be a youtuber I’ve learned :)
And hell yes. Can’t wait to get those highs again. Need to push through these tough days and it’ll come again!
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of pretty good. If you’re feeling burnt-out or depressed or even just low on energy, making some sort of progress everyday is already great!
MaruMori sounds interesting, what’s it like on the whole and what sets it apart from other apps?
Always cool to see a new tool, but a paid-only app is a hard sell with how rich the available resources are for Japanese. One of my things is I’ve realized I need to focus on getting everything out of the resources I already use, with less bouncing between different ones… but it’s fun to scope out all the stuff that’s available. 😅
The grammar is a bit more hand-holdy and ordered in a way that’s a lot easier to digest. They have SRS for grammar, as well as specific grammar drills, games, base vocab SRS and achievements and yearly wrap ups. Basically you are getting multiple language features for the price of a single app. Things like WaniKani are good, but you pay for a certain amount that MaruMori covers and that and then some. So value wise it already beats out WK, and tons of people love WK for it’s SRS. It’s basically best value where you get most other app features in a centralized app. It’s not perfect, but it just has a lot of value baked in that’s hard to find elsewhere. I think Renshu is the nearest thing, and even then the grammar lessons on that are somewhat lacking by comparison.
I use paid services more often than not, I’d love to learn without having to pay, but if a service is good I’ll use it. The only language I can even think of to learn for free would be Lojban, and that’s because it’s so niche there’s literally no demand for it, so there’s no products for it. Maybe after a next language cycle when I feel I’m just going to maintain my already learnt languages, I’ll cruise on into Lojbanistan.
I learned some more vocab and did some context learning.
I also started using GPT for some really basic story translation. I’d been using children’s board books (18 month old kid kind of materials) for a while, but with GPT it can give me some tailored short stories, then some feedback on my translation.
My prompt:
“I’d like to do some german to english translation practice. Could you please write a 3 paragraph story in German. The language level is 18 months, like a board book kind of level. I’ll try to translate it.”
The feedback after I type in a translation is usually about like this:
Good work! You caught most of the meaning correctly. A few small notes:
“Der kleine Hund Max läuft in den Garten.”
You wrote: “The small dog Max ran in the garden.” Better: “The little dog Max runs into the garden.”
Two things:
läuft is present tense (“runs”), not past. in den Garten means “into the garden” (motion toward), not “in the garden.”
“Die Sonne scheint.”
You wrote: “The son shines.” Just a slip: Sonne = sun, not son. So: “The sun is shining.”
Is it better than in-person work? Nope. Can I do it on the train while I commute? Yup. Is it better than many of the tools I’ve run into? Naturlich.
Glad to hear you are working on your german still! Have you gotten some in-person tries in yet? I know those are intimidating.
LLMs can be useful for early language training the way you use it. I’ve used it to help me figure out dialect words I just can not find online at all in german.
And AFAIK language is specifically what they are trained for no? So it’s a good usecase. But a word of caution: be careful with trusting it with new information as always. Once asked an LLM out of curiosity what would be the closest non-direct translation for a “Fence” (merchant of stolen goods) in Finnish, it gave me a racist word that probably was in its training set. But for training easier stuff in the way you described it seems good :)
Und: Hast du schon ein Oktoberfestbier getrunken?
Danke für die Gedanken.
Nein, ich habe kein Oktoberfestbier getrinken. Ich trinke fast kein alkohol. Aber, ich bin in Berlin und Oktoberfest ist klein hier.
Achso! Ich trinke auch nicht so viel. Ich glaube es ist besser für unsere gesundheit.
I know a lot of folks around these parts are pretty down on LLMs, but I think they are fairly strong for this kind of use case. Doesn’t really matter if there are occasional parts it gets outright wrong, and it’s very good at producing reasonable sounding language and proofreading your messages for mistakes.
I feel it’s a reasonable level of use. Some of the big hurdles they have are pronunciation, idioms, and complex grammar. I’m operating at a text only 2 year old level, so it should be okay. :-)
The immediate feedback on why my German isn’t totally correct is invaluable. The big ones are conjugation and the variants on implied motion (a huge part of German ad a language), which it’s helping me a ton with.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen!
