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The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish

  Tags: Anki | Finnish | Korean
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druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4865 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 145 of 559
26 July 2012 at 1:59am | IP Logged 
Obviously you know best what works for you, but I'd like to clear up a couple of misconceptions about the sentence method. Maybe you'll surprised how effective it is when you give a different card design a chance.

Evita wrote:
I considered it but I don't think it's a good choice for me. First, I've seen people tell they can't recognize these words outside the sample sentences and I think that's a valid concern. My main goal is to learn the words well so I don't want to do this.

I thought the same thing at the beginning and while it doesn't happen often at all, in some cases it can. However, this is easily remediable. When I meet the word in a different context and can't remember it's meaning, I just make another Anki card with the new sentence. If you want only one card per word you could just replace the former sentence with the new one. That way you will eventually remember the word in any context.

Evita wrote:
Second, I'm using Anki to measure how many words I know. If I use sentences then that doesn't work anymore. Third, I'm using active cards in Finnish and producing a whole sentence will be problematic.

You can mark the word you're focussing on and create multiple cards with the same sentence for different words in that sentence (this is also what the AJATT guy does). For production I recommend cloze deletion cards. Basically, you get a sentence and the word you're supposed to remember is blanked out. You can add a translation on the front as well, if it's not clear from context which word is missing.

Evita wrote:
Fourth, I don't have a source of interesting sentences. I wouldn't want to use either my textbook or LP for that.

I can't argue with that. However, I doubt that studying single words is more interesting.

The real benefit of the sentence method is that it will eventually help you with production. If you remember words in the context of sentences it becomes easier to make your own sentences. It gets much harder if you just memorise single words.

If you still think that sentences aren't for you, there are other methods to add more context to your cards. Either you could add audio for the words or pictures (when possible - pictures you like and find memorable) or both. It's quite likely that it will make remembering easier.

And last of all, you may simply need to slow down a bit. If you forget many words, maybe you're overtaxing your memory. After all, learning Finnish and Korean at the same time and at as a fast pace as you're doing is difficult.

The worst that could happen is if Anki reps burn you out and take the enjoyment out of language study. I hope that doesn't happen to you, because I think your Finnish-Korean project is great.
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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6549 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 146 of 559
26 July 2012 at 9:47am | IP Logged 
dori, thank you for the links, I will definitely check them out.

druckfehler, I admit that the sentence method might be good but I don't think it's for me, I prefer my cards simple. I think I learn the words better without context, and also it allows me to create the cards quickly. I do have the Korean phrases deck but it's mostly for grammar.

I'm still a beginner in both languages and I'm still learning the basic words. They don't need much of a context. When I get to more advanced stuff, I may revisit my Anki method.

Quote:
The real benefit of the sentence method is that it will eventually help you with production.


That's probably true but I'm not willing to put in the effort for that. I guess I just don't like learning that way. I'll rely on other methods for production.

Quote:
And last of all, you may simply need to slow down a bit. If you forget many words, maybe you're overtaxing your memory. After all, learning Finnish and Korean at the same time and at as a fast pace as you're doing is difficult.


Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing, I'm slowing down. I don't think I'm exactly overtaxing my memory, I just don't (have time to) learn the words properly.

Quote:
The worst that could happen is if Anki reps burn you out and take the enjoyment out of language study. I hope that doesn't happen to you, because I think your Finnish-Korean project is great.


Thank you, that's such a nice thing to say!

---------------------------

As for what I did yesterday, well, I did my Anki reviews (all of them!) and I repeated several TTMIK lessons. I also started a bit on unit 7 of my Korean textbook.

As for Finnish, I'm quite close to finishing lesson 9 about all the doctors and illnesses. The most obscure word I decided to add to Anki after all was sylkäistä (to spit out). Some of the other words (like lungs and gums) I'm not adding to Anki.
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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6549 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 147 of 559
27 July 2012 at 9:50am | IP Logged 
I did quite a lot of Korean studying yesterday. In addition to doing the Anki reviews, I also repeated several TTMIK lessons and I started on unit 5 of SNU. I did the vocabulary section and I was surprised to see words such as 위 there, I thought such location words would all be particles in Korean. I guess not.

I also noticed that there's a test on TTMIK for level 2. I did very bad in the first test but I've improved since then so I want to try another one. I'll give myself a couple of days to prepare for it. I'm hoping I will be able to understand at least 20% of the dialogue on the first time and up to 50% on repeat listenings but that will depend heavily on what kind of vocabulary they use.

I also listened to a bit of Finnish radio to put me in a Finnish mood before doing the Finnish Anki reviews. I still don't understand anything except the occasional word.

I wanted to keep watching My Name Is Kim Sam Soon but I turned it off after 10 minutes. I was in episode 14 and I don't find the main protagonists believable as a couple. I think I'll start watching My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho next.
1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6549 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 148 of 559
28 July 2012 at 9:25am | IP Logged 
I wanted to update this log last night but the opening ceremony of the Olympic games got in the way. The Rowan Atkinson segment was the funniest thing I've seen all week.

I said I would be slowing down with Anki but I just can't seem to do it. I added 7 new words for Finnish yesterday and 5 for Korean. So... I could lower the limit of the maximum new cards a day but I really don't want to do that while I still have the excitement and motivation to learn a lot. And it might not be as bad as I feared. When I was doing the Finnish reviews yesterday, I didn't miss once in the first 10 words and I realized that it's fun doing the reviews as long as I know the words; it's failing them that takes the enjoyment out of the process. I think a while ago I wrote here in this log that I would try to learn the words more before entering them into Anki (actually I didn't try much) and now I'm making the same resolve again.

I also found out something awesome yesterday: Anki 2 will have a learning mode. You can read all about it here. It will be ideal for me, I'll be able to review the new cards several times a day to really learn them before moving them to the standard review queue. I can't wait! But I don't want to deal with any bugs so I'll wait until a stable release comes out.

Still speaking of Anki, I hit 800 cards in both of my decks yesterday. Yay! Of course, that's just 400 words for Korean but it's still a lot. Looks like I won't have any problems getting to 1000 words in Finnish by the end of 2012, and 1500 is still attainable too.

Speaking of Finnish, I've gotten into the habit of looking at the Yle news in easy Finnish at work (because my textbook is at home), and yesterday was the first day I read a whole article. Okay, I used Google Translate first to get the overall idea and then I looked up every unknown word on Wikipedia and added some of them to Anki. Even though this particular news piece was nothing exciting, just info about a company laying off workers in Finland and building factories elsewhere in the world, I found it much more interesting than the texts in my textbook. In addition to the boring texts, the whole book seems boring because there's no color, it's just in black and white. Oh and it's also in Russian which doesn't make it easy for me. The book has a vocabulary section at the end of each lesson but that doesn't help me if I don't know the Russian word (which happens more and more often). So my point is that the book doesn't help me get excited about Finnish, in contrast to TTMIK and Korean.

Speaking of Korean, I repeated several more TTMIK lessons and I got the subtitles for the first episode of Revenge. I started watching it a bit yesterday and I think I will pause on most subtitles to give myself time to read them and think about the grammar. My grammar is still very basic, just the first two levels of TTMIK, but I will enjoy looking for patterns and trying to figure it out. I won't look up every word in the dictionary, just those that seem commonly used.
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Warp3
Senior Member
United States
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Joined 5532 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 149 of 559
28 July 2012 at 5:32pm | IP Logged 
Evita wrote:
I think I'll start watching My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho next.


That's still my favorite Korean drama by far and the only one I've ever liked enough to finish (though it looks like I'll be finishing Coffee House, which is the current drama I'm working through). MGIAG gets a bit more dramatic as it goes along, but is still loaded with humor throughout which offsets the drama quite well.

Evita wrote:
I also found out something awesome yesterday: Anki 2 will have a learning mode. You can read all about it here. It will be ideal for me, I'll be able to review the new cards several times a day to really learn them before moving them to the standard review queue. I can't wait! But I don't want to deal with any bugs so I'll wait until a stable release comes out.


That feature could be very useful for me to use with my Hanja deck.

I was curious to see how far along the version 2 beta had gotten, but can't seem to find a download link for the beta there. Both the download page on ankisrs.net and the downloads list on their Google Code site only show the 1.2.x versions (even though I know there is a 2.x beta since the bug tracker on the Google Code site lists bugs for it). Perhaps it is still in private beta at the moment.

Edited by Warp3 on 28 July 2012 at 5:33pm

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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6549 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 150 of 559
29 July 2012 at 9:13am | IP Logged 
It took me a while to find the betas too, I guess they are relatively well hidden so that people who are not looking for them wouldn't get confused. Here are the links:

Anki Users Google Group - This is where the beta releases are tested and discussed and also bugs are reported here.
Changes in Anki 2 - The main changes are described here in a very compact manner. The beta download link is at the bottom of the page.

I had 99 reviews to do in my Korean deck yesterday. 89 today. It's fine though, I've stopped freaking out about the growing numbers. One of the reasons I have to do more reviews in both languages is that I press the Hard button much more often now on production cards, maybe in 80%-90% cases. Even if I remembered the word well, I will still forget it quicker than if it was a recognition card so I need the card to show up sooner. (This is something I realized not a long time ago after working with Anki for months.) So the good news is that I fail less cards now and it makes me feel better about this whole thing.

I didn't do a lot of studying yesterday, just Anki and TTMIK reviews. Actually, I spent 2-3 hours on it so maybe that is a lot hehe. Oh and I also reread the level 1 test dialogue. It was good to see my improved reading speed in comparison to when I read it first but the Korean letters still feel foreign to me, I have to make an actual effort to read them, I can't read them with a glance.

Even though I'm not learning the Korean hanja, I'm aware of the concept and the fact that many Korean words are made up of them. A while ago I learned the Korean word 글 (writing) and only a couple of weeks later it hit me that it must have the same Chinese character as the 글 in 한글. I love making connections like this and I'm always on the lookout for more.
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Warp3
Senior Member
United States
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Joined 5532 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 151 of 559
29 July 2012 at 6:21pm | IP Logged 
Evita wrote:
Even though I'm not learning the Korean hanja, I'm aware of the concept and the fact that many Korean words are made up of them. A while ago I learned the Korean word 글 (writing) and only a couple of weeks later it hit me that it must have the same Chinese character as the 글 in 한글. I love making connections like this and I'm always on the lookout for more.


Even without Hanja you will start to notice syllables repeating like that which really helps when learning new words. However, 글 is one of those syllables that is actually native Korean, not Chinese, and thus has no Hanja. The closest Sino-Korean equivalent would probably be 자(字), as found in the word 한자, or maybe 문(文). The 한 part of 한글 is Sino-Korean though (韓) and refers to "Korea" (the same 한 found in 한류(韓流), the "Korean wave"). This isn't the same as the 한 in 한자(漢字), however, which refers to China instead (specifically to the Han dynasty, I believe).

Confused yet? ㅋㅋㅋ

Edited by Warp3 on 29 July 2012 at 6:24pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6549 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 152 of 559
06 August 2012 at 9:39pm | IP Logged 
It's more than a week since my last post - not because I stopped studying but because the forum got hacked and was not usable. In addition to that, my posts from July 30 and 31 were removed in the process of restoring the forum. I didn't save them anywhere so I'm afraid they're gone forever. I only remember lamenting that there was no Finnish Assimil in English and tarvos suggesting I use the one in German.

I think one of the reasons I had a hard time studying last week was that the site was down. I expect this week to be more productive if everything goes back to normal.

Here's what I wrote on Friday (Aug 3rd) morning:

My last update was 3 days ago and I've had a hard time studying since then. I've been busy at work so I've had to do most of the Anki reviews when I get home and that hasn't been fun. In addition to that, I've run into difficult grammar concepts in both Finnish and Korean (more on that below) so I'm trying to digest them slowly. Also, my evening yesterday was busy so I wasn't even able to finish all my Anki reviews.

Also, I spent a lot of Tuesday evening on German, looking up resources and evaluating my knowledge and thinking about that Finnish Assimil in German. My conclusion was that (unfortunately) I don't have time for German right now, and using Assimil would be difficult. I mean, I already have three base languages (Russian, English, and Latvian) for learning Finnish. Adding German to the mix would be too confusing.

Now, about the grammar stuff. I read what my book had to say about the third infinitive in Finnish and I also studied this site. It still seems difficult. Maybe I will actually do the exercises in my book and post them here for corrections because I think that's the only way I'll start feeling comfortable with it.

For Korean, I stopped at lesson 2 - Linking verbs with -고. The concept itself, though new, is not that difficult but using it and recognizing it in speech is. I'll have to work on it.

I haven't made any progress in my Korean textbook or the SNU lessons although I should have. I'll need to work on that too. The only other thing I've done is watched a bit of Gumiho (I'm in episode 2 now). It's still fun.

------------------------------------------------------

Saturday

Anki reviews are being a pain again. I think the root cause for it is that I wasn't very motivated to study this week, didn't have a lot of time, so I didn't learn the new words properly and I generally tried to do the reviews quicker than usually and the result was worse retention. I didn't do the Finnish reviews at all yesterday knowing today would be Saturday so I'd have time to catch up. I'll probably need to spend 2-3 hours on Anki today but I hope it won't be too bad if I do it in smaller chunks.

Lately I've become more lax in my reviews too. I usually allow myself to pass a card even if I got one letter incorrect. I know that the word will come up soon again (because I always press Hard) and I'll get it right then. If I get it wrong two or three times in a row then I fail the card.

I repeated lesson 2 of TTMIK yesterday and listened to the next lesson as well. Coincidentally, it was about the same location words (on top, behind, etc.) that are in my current SNU unit. I should know them really well once I'm done with both of those.

------------------------------------------------------

Sunday

I think I'm ready to upgrade my Korean to A1. I feel like I've earned it.

I worked on unit 5 of SNU yesterday. The way these units are set up is the following: first they introduce the new vocabulary. Then there's a short audio dialogue with a transcript. Then there's a grammar section. And finally, there's a reading section. And each section contains exercises, which is great. When I wanted to do this lesson at first, I wasn't able to do the vocabulary exercises because I hadn't learned the words yet so I slowly added them to Anki. Once I knew the vocabulary, the rest of the unit was easy because I already knew the grammar. Now I'm at the reading section (which is just two texts of 5 sentences each) and it's difficult again because it uses vocabulary that wasn't introduced before. So I'm adding the vocab to Anki and I'll do these texts later.

I'm up to lesson 2x22 on my TTMIK reviews. There have been a couple of moments where I didn't remember hearing something before at all so it's a good thing I'm doing this.

The first text in lesson 10 of my Finnish textbook is about the Finnish sauna. I can't say I find the topic terribly interesting but that's the least of my worries. The texts are getting more and more difficult and reading them is very exhausting because I have to think about every word and why it is in the case it is. Also, many words are new to the lesson so they're new to me so I have to look them up. I wanted to finish at least one paragraph of the text yesterday but I didn't. Maybe I should have tried doing it in the morning instead of at night.

My plan is to spend some more time on Finnish today because my progress in it has been too slow recently.


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