I Hit that Weird Language CD Moment

[lydamorehouse]

Those of you who have been following me for awhile might remember my story about listening to cassette tapes of "John Learner" and his trip to Japan to do business with his old college friend in the 1980s.

I've now hit that moment in Pimsleur (which I often call "Pimp's leur" since they seem VERY INSISTENT on teaching me how to ask a woman out) where I'm like, geez, Pimpsleur, you're not even hiding it any more. I have steadily been asking this nice young Japanese lady what she thinks of the weather, would she like to go back to my place, what time she wants to go to dinner, what she's doing today, even learning how to push it when she says that "Nine o'clock is a little...." (DUDE, SHE IS JAPANESE. SHE IS SAYING NO THANK YOU, HOW ABOUT NEVER??) ....and now, they're just straight up teaching me to ask, "How much money do you have?"

Wow, after all this build up, I thought for SURE I was at least paying for this meal at Nanbantei. (They legit teach you the name of this restaurant).

Apparently, not.

Apparently, I only have fifteen bucks in my pocket. (Actual content.)

What the hell, Pimpsleur. 

I am the worst. I think I liked hapless John Learner better.

Meanwhile, today is Wednesday so I should report on my consumption of various media. Monday, as I said, was anime night, and we watched:

Episodes 3 and 4 of Good Omens
The first episode of The Case Files of Lord El-Melloi II
more of Shounen Onmyouji

On my own, I caught up with Given, which is the one of these (besides Good Omens, which I assume you all have already watched a hundred times) I would whole-heartedly recommend. Given is a boys' love manga, but don't let that put you off. There are no yaoi hands in this anime. More importantly, despite some major angst, this is mostly a story about loving music, learning to be good at a thing, and what it means to be labeled as "talented" or a "prodigy." Like often happens, I'm personally invested in some of the side characters, but the main character, Uenoyama, amuses the heck out of me, too. It's also just lovely--very pretty, visually. I have been told the music isn't half bad, either.

I also just started watching A Certain Magical Index on the recommendation of a friend. I can't say much about that one yet, as I'm only two episodes in.

The only thing I've read was catching up on chapters of Ao no Exorcist/Blue Exorcist.

What about you?

Comments

[xochiquetzl]

LOLOLOLOL!!!

Yeah, they wanted to teach me out to ask out Israeli women. I was deeply vexed by the heavy emphasis on Office Talk in level 3: "I have an important meeting." "Will our client be there?" "I think so." "Can you return his call right away?"

But after having done quite a bit, I actually retained a lot. And also cannot spell, but Assimil is helping me with that.

[lydamorehouse]

To be fair, I think "office talk" would be even more useless. Despite the emphasis on going out on a date of some kind, I can actually imagine scenarios where asking someone "What time would you like to have dinner?" isn't as skeevy as Pimpsler makes it feel.

I liked Pimpsleur over all my other language CDs because the first and single most useful things that I not only learned, but retrained, were the phrases: "I don't understand Japanese" and "Do you speak English?" which I believe besides, "Sorry, I am an American" are probably the things I would definitely say the most if I ever went to Japan or needed to speak to a Japanese person.

[xochiquetzl]

Yeah, I was super grateful for, early on, "Do you speak English? I speak a little Hebrew, not very well. Sorry, I'm an American." I also learned a whole lot of basic "Hi, how are you? I am fine, pleased to meet you" style chitchat which was handy.

And "Excuse me, where is the bathroom?" is, in my opinion, the single most important phrase to learn! :D I can also say it in German and French!

The office talk was super boring. I think they seemed to assume that Hebrew I learners were going to travel, Hebrew II learners had relatives or some other connection that they wanted to chitchat with, and Hebrew III learners were going to work abroad on a project. To be fair, they also had some things that would have been handy for non-office purposes, like, "This is a great restaurant. Do you want to sit inside or outside?" (Outdoor seating is a thing at almost every restaurant and everyone wants to sit outside.)

[lydamorehouse]

Interesting.

I haven't gotten beyond Japanese I in Pimsleur, because I am the world's slowest language learner, I've decided. I have an online friend who claims to have just started (which sounds like I doubt her, but it's more that I'm astonished that people can apparently push this quickly through learning an entirely new language, which, in the case of Japanese, like Hebrew, there is an entirely different set of characters to learn--and Japanese has THREE sets of these) who posted about having learned to say, "These days I only read manga," which included at least TWO Kanji (the higher level character set) that I had to look up.

So, I mean, either I have zero retention (very possible) and/or other people are simply better at quickly learning, absorbing, and retaining language than I am, and can do it at speeds.

I mean, maybe I should know this about myself. After all, I took literally years and years and years of French, including college-level French, and I would be hard pressed to understand "Hello, how are you?" in French at this point in my life.

Meanwhile, when I took one semester of Russian in college, I would sit down to Russian tests and suddenly my brain would remember how to say the sentence in front of me IN FRENCH. Not helpful, brain. Not. Helpful. I'm surprised I'm not remembering Russian as I try to learn Japanese.

[xochiquetzl]

Well, Japanese is actually harder than Hebrew. And also, I bought 90 Pimsleur lessons (Hebrew I, II, and III each have 30 lessons) and spent maybe six months doing it? And I'm probably a false beginner in Hebrew because 1. Duolingo and 2. most of our religious services at my synagogue are in Hebrew (I learn it like sheet music in a different language, even though there's no sheet music). AND I'd previously learned the Hebrew alphabet with a book my Rabbi gave me.

So, yeah. I didn't do it that fast.

Things I'm learning in reading about foreign languages include:

* It's super common to retain nothing from high school or college language classes. In fact, there's some discussion that they're done entirely the wrong way for most people. When you're a kid learning a language, first you learn to talk and then people start to correct your grammar and then you learn how to read and write and get heavy into grammar. High school and college classes start off with grammar tables, which many people (including Paul Pimsleur!) think is the opposite way it should go.

* It's similarly super common to try to speak one foreign language and have another one come out. My mother did this all the time when we were traveling: She'd speak Spanish in Italy and Italian in Spain. My sister is learning Spanish for work and is finally at a stage where Spanish comes out instead of French or German.

* Retention: There's a whole lot of science on how to get things into long term memory, which you absolutely have to do to progress. Most of it revolves around "spaced repetition systems," which Pimselur is. Basically, they try to remind you just around the time you're about to forget.

I love this guy's Ted Talk, although I don't think translation is Satan (he does). But I do think he's onto something.

[lydamorehouse]

This TED talk is amazing. I want this.

I will say that my Japanese language teacher was very much in agreement with the idea that grammar and reading should be learned after conversation. He said, "When did you learn to spell? To write? First or second grade? How long before that had you been speaking?" And, I really did try to stick with this idea for a long time, but there are almost no good ways (besides CDs) to listen/speak without also having to learn to write. Duolingo is impossible unless you can write, so I've given up on trying to only converse/listen in/to Japanese.

Pimsleur really is very good about repetition and reminding in a way I rarely have encountered in the zillion and a half language CDs that i've listened to over the years. The only other one that I remembered liking was the Berlitz tapes in French, because they recorded real life situations, with background noises and everything, which I found helpful as a refresher, but I'm not sure how useful it would have been to LEARN from scratch, you know?

Have you tried Rosetta Stone? I have not wanted to take the plunge, in terms of cost, but a lot of people swear by them as well.

[xochiquetzl]

I haven't tried Rosetta Stone. What I've heard is that it's super useful for absolute beginners and too easy if you're past the absolute beginner phase.

What I'm using now is Assimil (the web site is in French, but you can get stuff that's English learning whatever language--I got mine at Amazon). If you decide to do it, get the ones with the audio recordings. I like it a lot, even though it's getting really hard! It's emphasizing reading and writing the way I'm doing it. I knew a lot of words from Pimsleur early on.

I'm also using Anki flashcards. I've been turning Assimil dialogs into flashcards (one card per sentence). This worked great until recently, and now I'm behind and feel like I'll never catch up. ;)

[lydamorehouse]

I hate that feeling. I know that Duolingo is all about trying to "game-ify" the experience of language learning by making it 'fun' to see how long you can go on a streak, but I think they underestimate the 'ah, crap, I blew it, now I'm behind, I might as well give up' attitude that some people (ESPECIALLY ME) have. To be fair, I have rarely been motivated by a sense of "obligation" or guilt. (I made a terrible Catholic.)

Flashcards is totally a thing I should be using. I am stubbornly resisting them for zero good reasons.

What I wish there were much, much more of is the feature on this app I have "Poro," called "Famous literature corner" where they read to you and the cursor highlights the written version, word by word. This is how I was always taught to read stories to children. Point to the words you're reading so that they get used to the idea that this bunch of letters (kana) = sounds = concepts. It's like the guy in the TED talk said, if you associate a word with the feeling (like you might get from a good story) it can start to stick.

What I like about the app feature is that you have the option to listen to it the first time with English subtitles, so you can know the gist of the thing, but then you can turn those off and just let someone read to you while "pointing" to the words. I have no idea if I'm learning or retaining anything this way, but it's.... comforting? And I wish someone would read me a whole novel this way.

I mean, I'm sure I can get audio books in Japanese, but they would not contain the highlighting the words feature. which is a big part of what I enjoy. As it is, I also have a couple of fun podcasts that are just people talking. There's one called "Learn Japanese from Small Talk" or something like that, where two Japanese-speaking girls sit around in their apartment and talk about the morning commute or school or the weather. This mostly sounds like nonsense to me, but occasionally a word will pop out and I get to feel really smart and accomplished, you know? I use it as white noise mostly, and to just get familiar with how Japanese sounds.

I have a friend the one who is already using high-level Kanji who swears by Drama CDs, which are basically anime extras popular in Japan. In some cases, the CDs are what some popular but not-quite-THAT-popular manga get instead of an anime, so they can be dramatizations of a manga you might already know by heart and love. So, picking up what's happening depends entirely on the idea that you've already absorbed this story on a visceral level. I should hunt down more of those, honestly. She loaned me a couple to try out and I found the experience kind of strange, but maybe because they were both yaoi! :-)

[xochiquetzl]

Oh, wow, Poro sounds great!

Apparently, Hebrew audiobooks are... not a thing. I'm listening to a Hebrew podcast called "Streetwise Hebrew," that's mostly in English (it's for learners) and if you subscribe you can get the entire episode in Hebrew with a transcript, which would be super helpful, but I'm going to finish Assimil before I take on anything new. My flashcards and Duolingo are already stressing me out. ;)

What I DO have is all the Harry Potter books, including Fantastic Beasts and some riddle books for very small children, in Hebrew! which I'm going to learn on once I finish my Other Things. (Like, I have an actual Hebrew Grammar Book that I plan to look at once I finish Assimil.)

Some people like flashcards and some don't. You don't have to use them if you don't want to!

[lydamorehouse]

Oh, and Pimpsleur and Duolingo have made sure I can ask for the restroom: トイレはどこですか 'Toilet' (spelled with the kana specifically for foreign borrow words) wa doko desu ka? (No Kanji in this sentence, but probably if I needed to say, "I need a toilet right now," the word for now, 今, ima, would be in that third set of characters, Kanji, even though one could spell it out in Hiragana.)

[xochiquetzl]

Haha!

איפה השרותים

Aifo hashuruteem?

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, no, look at this crazy sentence: 今トイレが必要です

In order to read that you need to know all THREE kana sets. Ima, in Kanji, toilet, in Katakana (for borrow words), ga (hiragana, the particle marker, and in this case meaning, a person is in need, rather than that the subject is the toilet,) two Kanji I don't know to imply need, and then back to hiragana for the copula, the "to be" verb/polite sentence ending.

[xochiquetzl]

Hebrew has no copula. Heh. I hungry. Book long. Garden pretty.

Yeah, they also have only one alphabet.

[lydamorehouse]

Japanese rarely uses pronouns. Hungry (I am speaking, so it is implied that I am.) American? (asking are you, since you're the only foreigner in the room.)

[abracanabra]

Woooooowwwww. That language lesson is ... something, all right.

[lydamorehouse]

What's funny is that I heard from another friend who is using Pimpsluer to learn Norwegian and she also had the "Jeez, stop pushily asking this lady out!" feeling about some of the lessons.

It might be a feature, not a bug.