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The Schliemann Experiment | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7093 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 25 of 38 18 October 2010 at 10:44am | IP Logged | |||||
I missed your post in the Text memorization and imitation thread first time round:
On reflection reading what you wrote there and here above, I can see that my opinion that memorisation is easier than I anticipated is too simplistic. What I'm doing is the equivalent of working my way through an "easy reader" in the two languages; the number of unknowns is minimal in each lesson and for German, they're not really unkowns they're simply vocabulary and constructions I'm being reminded about. This is reflected in the fact that the German lessons takes very little time to memorise, the Italian a lot longer with shorter SRS cycles. What you're doing with Russian is jumping straight in at the deep end.
I do hope not but, as you say, reducing the amount of text you're attempting to absorb in one go may help. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 26 of 38 18 October 2010 at 11:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, that's the purpose of this thread. I want to know whether the method proposed by Schliemann does work. It sounds absurd to use a "real" book right from the start, and I didn't expect it to be easy. How much willpower does it require? How long does the initial phase last until it gets easier? This might be my last chance to try this method, because I don't intend to learn any more languages after that. Not that I wouldn't be interested in any others (Hungarian, Modern and Ancient Greek, and Latin would be next in line), but depth of knowledge is more important to me, and the day has only so many hours. I've changed my approach. Absorption of large amounts of text seems to require a good vocabulary. Learning both the vocab and the text is either too slow or not possible at all. That is what I've learned from the first weeks. From now on I'll go for manageable chunks of text and learn them well before I proceed to the next bit. Unfortunately, the webapps for removing characters mentioned earlier in this thread don't work for Cyrillic text in UTF-8. Regular expressions in vim (a Unix text editor) don't do the right thing either, or at least I couldn't figure out how they work with two-byte characters. The word movement commands do work, however, so I still could prepare the text manually until I find a way to automate it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 27 of 38 23 October 2010 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Week 6
The change of strategy mentioned above has given my sails some new wind. Currently I'm going through the first chapters again with the text reduced to the first letter of each word until I think I know this section. This works very well. At the moment I can cover a lot of text, but this is from the part that I've listened to very often over the previous weeks. It will be more interesting to see how quickly I can learn new text that way. Apart from that, there is not much to say right now. It will take me another week to figure out how I'm doing. At some point I should start to write texts in my target language. I don't think I'm ready for this, but if I keep waiting I may never feel ready. Quote of the week Or rather: discovery of the week. Here is one of my favourite aphorisms by Oscar Wilde: Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cavemen had known how to laugh, history would have been different. This is from "The Picture of Dorian Gray". I've known it for about 12 years and discovered only now the quote below from the 2nd part of Zarathustra, which I've known for 17 years. These two are just too similar to be a coincidence. But which was ... ehm ... inspired by which? "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was released in 1890, part 2 of Zarathustra in 1883. And the Wikipedia article on Oscar Wilde says that he had become fluent in German very early in life. So there you are. To Oscar Wilde's defense I can say that I like the way he put it more than the original. Seit es Menschen gibt, hat der Mensch sich zu wenig gefreut: Das allein, meine Brüder, ist unsre Erbsünde! Und lernen wir besser uns freuen, so verlernen wir am besten, andern wehe zu tun und Wehes auszudenken. С тех пор как существуют люди, человек слишком мало радовался; лишь это, братья мои, наш первородный грех! И когда мы научимся лучше радоваться, тогда мы тем лучше разучимся причинять другим горе и выдумывать его. (Antonov) As long as men have existed, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin! And if we learn better to enjoy ourselves, we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to contrive harm. (Hollingdale) Så länge som det funnits människor har människan glatt sig för lite: Endast det, mina bröder, är vår arvsynd! Och lär vi oss att glädjas bättre, så glömmer vi bäst bort att göra andra ont och tänka ut ont. (Teratologen) Depuis qu'il existe des hommes, l'homme s'est trop peu réjoui : cela seul, mes frères, c'est notre péché originel ! En apprenant à mieux nous réjouir, nous oublions d'autant mieux à faire du mal à d'autres et à nous imaginer comment faire mal. (Goldschmidt) Edited by OlafP on 23 October 2010 at 8:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 28 of 38 30 October 2010 at 1:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Week 7
It seems like I've finally found my rhythm, a rhythm that is maintainable over a long period of time, even when there is stress on the job and I don't feel like doing a lot in the evening. With this approach of covering a chunk of text until I know it well it seems to be realistic to finish the first of four parts of the book by the end of November. The whole text by the end of December is out of reach. But more important than that: the way it is now I actually enjoy the process. One thing is already obvious: the method does work. I'm learning a lot, and I can do it with one of the best books ever written. It is amazing to see the flexibility of the Russian language. Translations to other languages often need to circumscribe expressions, but the Russian version is very close to the original. Contrary to what is called language families, Russian and German seem to be much closer related than English and German. Both Russian and German have cases, which allows the word order to be less restrictive, and both make heavy use of prefixes. I can't say whether this method is faster than using usual language learning material. Maybe it doesn't matter at all how you go about learning a language as long as you spend a lot of time with it, using material that is demanding enough to challenge you. But one thing I know for sure: normal language courses bore me stiff. I will not go back to them. May the publishers keep dumbing down their courses -- I don't care anymore. The funny thing is that the text I'm using is better for language learning than many standard textbooks, because for stylistic reasons it often uses opposites and similarities ("cold frogs and hot toads"), enumerations of related terms ("A heretic will you be to yourself, and a witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy man and scoundrel."), and possible or apparent synonyms, sometimes even with a definition ("Lonelines is one thing, solitude another [...] -- when you said: May my animals lead me! More dangerous I found it among human beings than among beasts. -- That was loneliness!") As I wrote in the first post of this thread, you won't get the 20k words that you would want for total fluency from one book, and you won't get it from two either. If Schliemann was satisfied with something like 7k words per language then he may be right that you can learn this with a lot of work in half a year or so, but you can do this with other methods as well. The main benefit that I see at the moment is that you don't necessarily need a language course but you can use any book you like plus a good grammar. Quote of the week Frei steht noch großen Seelen ein freies Leben. Wahrlich, wer wenig besitzt, wird um so weniger besessen: gelobt sei die kleine Armut! Еще свободной стоит для великих душ свободная жизнь. Поистине, кто обладает малым, тот будет тем меньше обладаем: хвала малой бедности! (Antonov) Une vie libre est encore ouverte aux grandes âmes. En vérité, celui qui possède peu est d'autant moins possédé : louée soit la petite pauvreté. (Goldschmidt) A free life still remains free for great souls. Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty! (Hollingdale) Ett fritt liv är fortfarande möjligt för stora själar. Sannerligen, den som besitter lite kommer desto mindre att tas i besittning: prisad vare lite fattigdom! (Teratologen) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 29 of 38 03 November 2010 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Disclaimer: I don't take any responsibility for physical pain or heart attacks inflicted by my (ab)use of the noble Russian language.
-- Странные изобретения Джона Кили (1827 - 1898) Несколко дней назад я читал интересную статью по-немецки о Джоне Кили и своих странных машинах. У Кили не было высокого образования, но кажется что он был впечатляющий человек и у него был техничный талант. Кроме того, он возможно был величайший предатель истории техники. Он утверждал что он мог бы построить машину, которая могла тянуть поезд на сотни километров с одним литром воды как топливо. Он изобрел много странные слова, чтобы обмануть инвесторов поверить, что он знал, о чем он говорил. Таким образом, он собрал 5 миллионов долларов. Часто говорил он о том, что его изобретения использовались неизвестную эфирную жидкость, которая находиться между атомами. Его "либератор" был аппарат, который мог бы каким-то добыть энергию из молекул вода, освобождая эту жидкость. Кили построил машины с подвижным веса, вращающимся колесами и похошим, которые надо бы иметь вид очень впечатляющий. Позже в своей жизни добавил он пиротехнические и шумовые эффекты. Не было ясно, как эти машины двигались. Во время его демонстрации в его доме, который может длились несколько часов, он приложил странный язык, чтобы убедить аудиторию, что он гений. Он говорил о симпатических колебаний мира, физике любви, и законе химической морфологии. Кажется, что многие люди полагали этот чушь. Он никогда не производил ничего, что могло пойти на рынок, но убегил своих инвесторов, что ему нужно больше времени и денег на исследовании, и он никогда не разрешал никому изучить, как эти вещи работали. Это продолжалось до своей смерти. После того как он умер в 1898 года, некоторые эксперты наконец могли изучить, как Кили построил все эти машины. Оказалось, что все они двигались с помощью сжатого воздуха. The strange inventions of John Keely (1827 - 1898) A few days ago I read an interesting article in German on John Keely and his strange machines. Keely didn't have a high education, but apparently he was a charismatic person and techically gifted. Besides that, he might have been the biggest traitor in the history of technology. He claimed he could build a machine that could pull a train hundreds of kilometers, using only one liter of water as fuel. He invented a lot of strange words that should make investors believе that he knew what he was talking about. With this method he collected 5 million dollars. One thing he often talked about was that his inventions used a yet unknown etheric liquid that would reside between atoms. His "liberator" was a device that could somehow gain energy from water molecules by releasing this liquid. Keely built machines with moving weights, rotating wheels and the like that must have looked very impressive. Later in his life he added pyrotechnic and sound effects. It was not obvious how these machines were propelled. During his demonstrations in his house, that could last several hours, he used a weird language that should convince the audience that he was a genius. He talked about sympathetic oscillations of the world, physics of love, and the law of chemical morphology. Apparently many people believed this nonsense. He never produced anything that could go to market but convinced his investors that he needed more time and money for research, and he never allowed anyone to investigatе how this stuff worked. This went on until his death. After he had died in 1898, some experts finally had a chance to figure out how he had built all these machines. It turned out that they were all propelled by compressed air. Edited by OlafP on 05 November 2010 at 1:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 30 of 38 06 November 2010 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Week 8
This week I didn't learn much new text, but at least I started to write. I actually like writing once I get going, even though it is extremely hard at the moment. I have to use a dictionary all the time, and when I need to pick a word out of several alternatives, I usually check the inverse translation to make sure I don't choose a word that belongs to a different context. This takes an awful lot of time: finishing the text above took me 5 hours, distributed over 3 evenings. I had made an English version first, but I didn't do a real translation to Russian. The English version was only a guideline to keep me on track, and when I had no clue how to express something in Russian then I just changed the English text. My goal with writing at the moment can only be to get the syntax right. There are so many bells and whistles attached to Russian words. Producing something with a natural idiom will take me years. That's the same with every language, and there are no shortcuts. I'll write more in Russian over the next weeks, because it is part of the Schliemann method anyway, and it probably is what I need most right now. Writing will cut time off the text learning part. Hoping that with part 1 of the book I would have covered half of the vocabulary, I did the same wordcount analysis with the English text as in the beginning of this thread, but this time by parts. All four parts have roughly the same length. It turned out that after one quarter of the text I will have covered only one third of the vocab: end of part 1 (25% of the text): 36% of the vocabulary end of part 2 (50% of the text): 59% of the vocabulary end of part 3 (75% of the text): 81% of the vocabulary This tells me that it won't get much easier later on. The result might be skewed a bit towards low percentages, because I cannot filter out singular/plural modifications or conjugated verbs. I will not switch to another method for learning Russian, but I may use different texts after I finished part 1 of Zarathustra. When I bought audiobooks I ordered a nice collection of texts by Chekhov, Pasternak, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. I will go through all of them and much more over the years -- that's why I'm learning Russian, but I could also use some of them early and commit them partially to memory. Chekhov's shortstories surely would be a good choice. Quote of the week Den Guten und Gerechten sah einer einmal ins Herz, der da sprach: "es sind die Pharisäer." Aber man verstand ihn nicht. В сердце добрых и праведных воззрел некогда тот, кто тогда говорил: "Это -- фарисеи". Но его не поняли. (Antonov) One man once saw into the hearts of the good and the righteous, and said: "They are Pharisees." But he was not understood. (Parkes) En man såg en gång in i de godas och rättfärdigas hjärtan och talade så: "det är fariséerna". Men man förstod honom inte. (Teratologen) L'homme qui a sondé jusqu'au fond les cœurs des bons et des justes est celui qui a dit: "Ce sont des pharisiens." Mail il n'a pas été compris. (Bianquis) Edited by OlafP on 06 November 2010 at 11:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 31 of 38 13 November 2010 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Week 9
Only a short update this time. I didn't have much time for language learning this week. If you have to work to make a living, things can be a real pain, especially when you have the impression that you're not doing anything useful. Anyway, early next month I'll have a few days off, and I'm looking forward to this. Now that I'll enter the double digits with the week numbers I might actually change the format of my posts. Weekly updates on what I'm doing don't seem to be so useful anymore, because I'm not going to change my approach dramatically. As for writing texts in Russian, I had a look at lang-8. The interface is confusing, and I don't really like it. I'm not convinced that getting corrections is that important, because I hardly ever got English and French texts corrected and still learned to write these languages. The crucial thing is to remain critical with one's own output and to get a feeling for what doesn't sound natural. This requires a lot of exposure to the written and spoken language, so this would be one more reason to read different texts instead of sticking to only one for months. But I should at least give lang-8 a try. So I still wrote three paragraphs, even though I didn't have anything to say. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| GrandMan Newbie United States Joined 5269 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* | Message 32 of 38 13 November 2010 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Keep it up. Even though I'm not doing exactly the same, I've been studying over and over Die Verwandlung von Franz Kafka, and the infinte repetitions have helped me so much. I have phrases from it which just pop into my head.
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