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Assimil Adventure: 6 languages at a time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6259 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 57 of 94 21 September 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have two Anki decks for Assimil Swahili: one with the vocabulary Swahili-English that I used during the passive phrase, and one with audio + Swahili sentence + French sentence that I used during the active phase. If you want, I can send them to you in private, just give me your e-mail address. Good luck with this crazy project! Any chance you'll be at the Junulara E-Semajno over New Year's so we could speak some Swahili and Chinese and Latin? Edited by Sprachprofi on 21 September 2012 at 5:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5321 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 58 of 94 21 September 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Eh, it was more that learning 80-something biliterals just wasn't that big a deal, even if some unknown percentage of them were useless. It would have taken me more time to improve the standard list than to actually learn them all. (Remember, half the deck is determinatives, which are ridiculously simple to learn. The phonetic signs in my Anki deck all fit easily on a single page, in a big font, with lots of whitespace.) If you want to build a real-world frequency database, your best bet is probably parsing texts in Manuel de Codage format, which can be found here and there online. Here's a small example: A small database of texts Real hieroglyphs would make for a fun OCR challenge. Unlike most ancient scripts, they're usually large, well-drawn and standardized. But that also means that most of them are quickly transcribed by scholars. And even a simple, non-standard OCR program is a huge amount of programming work. The real challenge is hieratic and demotic texts, which involve all kinds of nasty cursive ligatures. But as far as I know, this stuff is way beyond the state-of-the-art for OCR, and it often poses challenges for actual human specialists. (There's a simple form of hieratic that was often used for the Book of the Dead that might be amenable to OCR. But most real texts are harder than that.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4467 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 59 of 94 24 September 2012 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! You're definitely going to receive a pm right after this post. I think I can make good use of the sentence + audio one, even though I wonder how it will fit in my revision routine (i.e. using Anki on the bus on my phone). I'll have to experiment I suppose... As for the JES, I had never heard of it, but it looks like I could be interested. However, on their website, they don't really describe the schedule for this year, so I'm not sure what I should expect during these seven days. Are they going to bring a bit more information about it to the website soon? Or is it something you would like to create a new topic about, perhaps? Or otherwise, I'd be happy discussing that in private. The thought of actually speaking Swahili and Latin (and probably all but Egyptians) right by the end of my "adventure" is pretty intimidating, but it would surely fuel my motivation a lot.
Alright, it indeed makes sense to have such a list then. As for the rest, it looks like a very interesting topic, but it seems that will unfortunately have to wait until I have more time on my hands, as I find myself more and more constrained and have quite a hard time working on the languages themselves. This is a bit sad as I wish I could put more time into Egyptians, but well, at least I try to do correctly (i.e. "what is required") the lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6259 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 60 of 94 25 September 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There's no set schedule because it's participant-oriented. The organizers make sure
that there's * food * drink * excursions to nearby sights * concerts (http://jes.pej.pl/2012/programo.php) * space to dance etc. * probably also an Esperanto course for upper beginners and for intermediates * maybe Esperanto CEFR exams ... but apart from that, it all depends on the participants. When people sign up, they can indicate that they want to guide a session and that's when the session comes into being. Some people also decide on the spot, or when pressured by friends at the event. I'm pressuring a friend of mine to give an introduction to lockpicking, and another one to teach the classic Mongol script... I myself taught a Swahili session last time, and I created a Youtube video based on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye693UX0WG4 This time I probably won't do a session, just hang out in the ludejo and teach people Go (Weiqi). There will certainly be dancing classes and juggling, these seem to be a standard staple, as well as a 60-minute introductory class for the local language (= German this time), and a session on Vietnam. I wrote a long blog post about what to expect: http://temp.learnlangs.com/blog/esperanto_experience and you may also want to read forum member Doviende's account of his first Esperanto meet-up: http://bit.ly/Utey5J It's possible to go there with little knowledge of Esperanto, especially if you attend the beginners' classes, but those are in the mornings and most people will want to sleep in after partying ;-) I really don't recommend going there with no knowledge of Esperanto. Learn the basics (aka complete Ana Pana / Ana Renkontas on Lernu) and the experience will be much much nicer. Volte went to an Esperanto event after one month of self-study and was speaking it fluently by the end. Edited by Sprachprofi on 25 September 2012 at 7:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4467 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 61 of 94 25 September 2012 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Last week in the purely passive wave. I've been so busy that I've accumulated 4 full days late, and that's not a very pleasant thing. As the active wave is now starting, I wonder if I'll manage to last for three more months. Fatigue plays its role in this game, and I'm trying to manage myself as best as I can, but perhaps it suggests that if you want to undertake such a challenge, you should make sure you're going to have a peaceful life for the five next months. We'll see how it fares, and I'll try to take it to the end as I feel I can probably do it if well managed, that'd be a good opportunity for me to learn about learning and life management.
Assimil Adventure - Week 7 -Egyptian Hieroglyphs : lessons 43 to 49 : 2h30 Here it will be short: due to the business of my week, Egyptian has been the language that suffered the most: as I don't listen but only read (silently or aloud), I've decided that I'd use my commuting time to study it during this week (thing that I've done each day for the language reaching the revision lesson). Needless to say perhaps, but this is NOT ideal, and you're most likekly not to remember a lot. In addition to that, lessons this week were merely one long story, and this has proved to be quite tedious: a story that you'd take 3 minutes to tell in English, learning it over several days at half an hour a day is not very pleasant, as you get stopped in the middle of the story, and the story in itself is not particularly exciting (but is extracted from a real piece of litterature). -Latin : lessons 43 to 49 : 2h25 This week summed up the declensions, ah! Well, as I mostly knew them from learning them earlier this year, it was mostly the opportunity to learn the details of specific cases (interrogative/demonstrative pronouns etc). The lessons were nice as usual, progressing seamlessly. There's one thing that absolutely annoyed me still, they kept refering to the absolute ablative (in notes "here this is an absolute ablative") without ever (or else I've missed it) mentioning what it was used for. Fortunately, I've taught myself to use Google a few years ago, and Wikipedia answered my question. I guess I'm ready for the active wave. -Norwegian lessons 43 to 49 : 3h05 Still my favourite language of the challenge, there's not much to say here. My listening skills are stagnating, I understand words by ear but not more and more, simply just as much, but my reading skills are improving somehow: I can often understand what it's about just reading the text, infer the meaning of new words (from context, from Germanic cognates) and know if and why it's funny. That's far enough for me to be happy and to have the desire to study Norwegian everyday. During this week, they've started introducing strong verbs, which I don't try to remember for now, counting on assimilation. I suppose they're relatively close in principle to English and German verbs? I'd have to look at the list and see if I can find patterns, but I haven't had the time. I feel completely ready for the active wave, and don't think it will be a problem at all. At least that'll be one language that doesn't make me suffer too much! -Polish : lessons 43 to 49 : 2h15 My feelings are constant on Polish. One day I find that the pronunciation is so hard (words in isolation are ok, but when stringed together, the local consonantal density just gets too high) that it takes me too long to manage to read the text decently, and some other days it's just a breeze. I'm also concerned that I don't remember the vocabulary very well, and that could be quite a problem when I'm going to start the active wave. Fortunately, the lessons are quite short so if the active wave shouldn't take me too long, and if needed, I should have enough time to put in place some Anki deck. As for the declensions, Assimil has not done any recap about it yet. I suppose that they just want us to absorb them, but I don't even know if there are several declesnsions (apart from the genders) or just one, and at least they haven't mentioned it, they merely say "this is the genitive of that" from time to time. Somehow I still think this is a good method as I'm pretty sure I could guess correctly several of the cases for many words, but perhaps a bit of formalising would help. -Swahili : lessons 43 to 49 : 4h Finally a great week for Swahili! I'm very glad I've started that Anki deck: it's not so much that the repetition makes the words stick (I have some serious problems remembering some words..), but it's rather the fact of looking the words up the dictionary, see words of the same family (kutua = to stop, kituo = a stop) that helps me create connections, and everything seems clearer. It of course takes me quite some time to build (probably a good 10-15mn/day) and to review (Anki2 and its "1 minute" delay is a real pain sometimes), but the benefits largely outweighs it. I've even had the pleasure to understand almost completely the lesson 48 at first read! And the grammar grows slowly but surely, which fuels my motivation to learn more every day. I feel much more ready for the active wave, and now Swahili is not a language I'm afraid of going to every day, but rather possibly the one I'm looking the most forward to studying. I've looked at a translated version of The Little Prince, and it seemed to contain quite a lot of vocabulary that I know already, so this may be on my purchase list soon, to add to my motivation. -Indonesian : lessons 43 to 49 : 2h55 Almost the exact opposite of Swahili! The dialogs are so dull every day, I really have to push myself to go to Indonesian every day. To my previous complaints, I'll add these two: -no revision lessons anymore until the end of the book. Yes, you've read well, I can hardly belive I'm using Assimil here. In lieu of revision lessons, the author simply provides a list of sentences/words (depend on the week) to translate to/from Indonesian. The goal is of course to make you review things studied before, and to apply them, but I'm sorry, that's not what I'm expecting from a revision lesson. It also suggests that there will be no content worth summarizing (there's something, but it's up to you to go back to read individual lessons) for the next two months, which is not very engaging. -in addition to that, even though the affixation system seems to be so important (and some affixes are very similar or not obvious to a beginner), no help anymore on that. I keep going back and forth to find what this or that affix means, but it's pretty tiresome. I don't know if I'll keep Indonesian. That's a language that looks great, but where Assimil Swahili still decomposes verbs to explain their structure all the time, to the point that it's perfectly clear and you feel they needn't decompose anymore, Assimil Indonesian explains nothing, having its notes focusing on some non linguistic details. I'll see how I deal with it, but for now I wouldn't recommend anyone buys this book. On the bright side, using Anki has helped me quite a lot remembering the vocabulary. But that's nothing to do with Assimil. A final note: Next week starts the active wave! That's going to be exciting, and hopefully I'll manage to sleep enough for the whole process to be fruitful. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4798 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 62 of 94 25 September 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can just repeat "you are awesome". Because you are. Good luck with handling both
passive and active waves during next weeks, I'm looking forward to reading more from you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4467 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 63 of 94 26 September 2012 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for your kind message, it's so nice to read! I'll try not to disappoint you then!
This morning, I've done my Polish lesson (55) and I found it quite a good example of Assimil's kind of humour, which I've mentioned several times and that is unfortunately missing from some other languages. For the curious, I thought I'd give you a taster of what kind of content you can get in Assimil Polish (or Norwegian, French, German, Latin and sometimes Swahili)
Far from the Indonesian touristic dialogs, isn't it? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4496 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 64 of 94 26 September 2012 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I could post a ton of the Russian ones as well. The one with the new Russian who takes
penguins to the zoo, cinema and MacDonalds is an eternal favourite. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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